This week's Grapevine brings you information fresh from the paddock on: Fly Away Rumours A Step in the Right Direction

Fly Away Rumours

Since the Monaco Grand Prix proved so uncontroversial, and testing between races is just another routine, there has been relatively little news going around, opening opportunity for the rumour mills to swing into action.

With Rubens Barrichello signing another two year contract at Ferrari, all the speculation on his imminent replacement has disappeared; it also means that the top six seats are all now seen as spoken for, and the remainder are of far less interest. Jenson Button's future could involve a return to Williams, but will probably still be tied to Renault; Fernando Alonso is another talent waiting for a seat, and Flavio Briatore is clearly prepared to lend him out, if the price is right. Jaguar have money to spend on a quick driver, and however much Niki Lauda claims it is to benchmark speculative test drivers, when Alonso sits in one of their cars, he is being seriously considered for a racing seat.

Talking of Flavio Briatore, the Italian's reputation as a major player has been boosted by the Renault recovery this season. There has been talk of his departure to make way for an established company man to spearhead the team's top sporting team. There's nothing like success to put paid to that sort of nonsense!

Jaguar's continued lacklustre performances has sparked speculation that Lauda's tenure is coming to a close. The idea of Jackie Stewart coming back has popular appeal, but no legs: as a figurehead, he would have some value with the fans and in the paddock, but the poison chalice that is the Jaguar hotseat is not a challenge he needs on his CV. The project story-line is easy to predict - Stewart takes over, Jaguar still don't win races, Ford pull the plug. No, whilst patience is not exactly in overwhelming supply, there is at least recognition that it takes months for a new incumbent to have a significant impact. It goes without saying, Lauda is keeping a close eye on Dave Richard's impact at BAR as a barometer of Ford's continued patience.

Meanwhile, the paddock believes Paul Stoddart's Formula One dream could be coming to a premature end, as he faces up to the very real threat of a choice between funding the team himself, seeing performance drop off from lack of finance until they struggle even to qualify, or selling it on to someone with the funding to run the team. Even completing this season is looking like it might need the European F3000 team to be sold off, and of course, the threat of redundancy looms large. It doesn't help that splitting resources between two sites is neither the cheapest, nor the most effective approach to running a team, but reorganising and merging the sites requires significant capital up front - and that is definitely not available.

A Step in the Right Direction

As BAR head off to Canada, there is a healthy attitude in the team, as the first positive signs of Dave Richards' impact look set to make a mark on the track. The past week saw the team testing what, in practical terms, amounts to a new specification of this year's car.

The changes are fairly comprehensive - officially, the aerodynamic package has been heavily revised, along with the rear transmission. Changing the gearbox, necessarily, required a new look at suspension mount points, so the opportunity has been taken to update the rear suspension geometry, which now appears to work far better with the aerodynamics to smooth air-flow around the area. The revision also works better with Bridgestone's rear tyres, promising an improved wear/grip trade-off.

Even before adding the latest specification Honda engine to this package it is demonstrating a solid step in the right direction. The drivers have found it easier to set up - it's still not precisely easy, but easier. It's impossible to establish what changes have taken place in the traction control software, but the back end of the car is being noticeably better behaved. The improved balance is definitely giving the drivers better confidence into corners.

The car has a number of weaknesses that are still outstanding. The chassis is heavier than it should be - leading teams are all running over 60 kilos of ballast, which is all used for fine tuning the centre of gravity in the search for balance. Furthermore, the aerodynamics are barely a patch on where they should be: in high downforce trim, the car is known to be about ten percent less efficient than the Williams, which, in its own right, is not as efficient as the Ferrari or McLaren solutions. On the positive side, in low downforce trim, the gap is much smaller.

At the start of the season, the all-new Honda engine was causing some serious headaches with its customers. BAR initially questioned its torsional rigidity - though that was suddenly dropped as an issue just before the revised gearbox work began. The engine's struggle for reliability at peak revs, however, has been an issue, resulting in Jordan and BAR running detuned units until the first evolution was available at the Austrian Grand Prix.

Even now, Honda are playing catch up. Whilst pundits are claiming BMW offer Williams over 860bhp, with Ferrari close on the same figures, Honda's usable power, even now, is not even up to the 840bhp mark that the unit was supposed to peak at for the start of the season. Adding to the woes, tuning the power to the accelerator to yield Honda's traditionally smooth power curve was showing a distressing lack of torque at lower revs. This left the teams with fewer options for gearing, and affected the efficiency of the traction control. Ironically, the solution for improving low end torque appears to have lent itself to improving the fuel efficiency too, which is a nice bonus.

Returning to Canada, BAR's new-found enthusiasm is no guarantee of success. Grunt is going to tell, and braking is always an important factor, whilst the low/medium downforce nature of the place will allow BAR's aerodynamic revisions to play a part: indeed, they aspire to taking a McLaren scalp in qualifying, if things go well enough. That said, even if the evolution gives them an edge over Jordan, they are going to struggle against Toyota, Sauber and Renault, let alone the front runners. Mind you, competing strongly in the midfield is certainly better than fighting off the Jaguars for the right to help Minardi prop up the grid.