This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Promises, Promises Taking it to the Establishment

Promises, Promises

Although Max Mosley has committed not to change the chassis rules for the next couple of seasons, and the Concorde Agreement ensures the engine format remains unchanged until 2007, the press to reduce costs is set to continue impacting the sport.

Bernie Ecclestone's plan to meet with the teams in Austria in order to further discuss routes to reducing costs is expected to set the groundwork for a significant change to the operating practices of the sport. The proposals he is bringing include offerings from private meetings with team managers, and range from the sublime to the absurd.

Smart money, at this time, is on a compromise that will allow teams that do not go testing between races to have extra track time over the course of the racing weekend. The prospect of an extra hour in "free sessions" on Friday and Saturday afternoons would see a number of backmarking teams in a position to save millions of testing dollars. The advantages for teams who use this track-time are obvious - particularly on technical circuits - for leveraging the experience to improve their set-up for the race. As an added bonus, teams would no longer require a test driver to pound out the miles if they did no independent testing.

However, there are some practical difficulties with this approach. For example, if cars are only allowed one engine for a weekend, what do they do about the testing period? Must they take along a complete spare chassis, or can they swap engines out for testing, then back in for the next days events? And, what, precisely, constitutes testing between races? Is there to be a limitation on which elements can be tested, and what happens if it is raining - is the session postponed until the rain stops, or declared a wet test? What notice must a team give that they will be partaking in the test? What if a team only tests one car between races - does that mean they can run the second over the weekend sessions?

Another suggestion, popular with the media when cost cutting ideas were first put forward, is to turn Friday's two timed sessions into a full day open test session; teams would have eight hours of track time to play with as they required. It would provide track owners with a full day of Formula One activity to market (nice commercial aspect), whilst again offering teams a chance to massively reduce testing commitments.

Talk of banning all testing outside weekend sessions is looking unlikely: the big players, particularly Ferrari, who have made it clear their feelings about being deprived the usage of their own test track, are all against limiting testing even further, when their fight is purely one of performance. Making concessions, offering the back markers a compromise to close the gap economically is one thing, but giving away all their advantages is another.

An excellent idea - which definitely did not originate from a front running team - is that all teams must submit blueprints for their cars when they race them: these would then become a matter of public record after a fixed four or six month period for the chassis, and nine months to a year for the engines. This would ensure that no team could gain a permanent, insurmountable edge, development costs for backmarkers are massively reduced. The argument is, that the team that submitted the plans will have moved on, and there is a lead time on key components (up to three months for the full transmission train, for example), so no one can beat the competition by just copying their designs, even if they can keep the performance gap down. On the other hand, it is easy to anticipate serious inertia from who have invested so much in their new cars when this idea is put forward!

Taking it to the Establishment

Heading to Austria, Toyota are keeping their heads down, much as they have during the rest of the season to date; however, all is not quite the same this time: given a dry race, the team see this circuit as one of their best chances to show well this season.

Whilst attention is focused on who can catch Ferrari at the front, the A1-Ring has characteristics that should play well into Toyota's hands. Although often described as something of a "Mickey Mouse" circuit, the track is unusual in its dual-setup nature: cars can be optimised with higher downforce to attack the corners, or lower downforce to maximise straight line speed, according to the strengths of the car, rather than the circuit. This chance to optimise for a car's strength, combined with the relatively short circuit, usually ensures a close grid, whilst the track itself offers some excellent overtaking opportunities.

Toyota know they have come in to this season with a very good engine; the chassis offers at least average mechanical grip, but their Achille's Heel to date has been weak aerodynamics, and relatively poor qualifying positions. At the A1-Ring, a powerful engine ensures passing is easy enough that a car can make up for poor qualifying, which plays right into the team's hands.

For this race, there is to be an upgrade to the software, which shows marginal improvement to the traction and launch control, whilst a lot of effort has gone into improving the car's baseline set-up. This has resulted in a revised suspension geometry to be tried on Friday, and another which will remain in the garage unless the drivers are struggling, as reliability is unproven.

In the tyre equation, Toyota are hoping Michelin will deliver the goods - Bridgestone have been right on the ball recently, so last year's Michelin performance is not a good indicator. However, Toyota are looking to Michelin for enough edge to give the Honda and Ford-powered teams a serious run for their money. Indeed, if all goes to plan, they will be pushing Sauber and Renault; and whilst this appears unambitious, there is no doubting the paddock would consider it a huge achievement for a team in their first year.

Add Mika Salo - the Finn has an affinity for this circuit, and generally goes very well - to the equation, and it is easy to see why Toyota are seeing this as a top chance to perform well on pure merit.