The introduction of the new scoring system in 2003 has put reliability in an even more important position than ever before. With half the season now gone it's time for Karl Ludvigsen's reliability assessment

Near the end of last weekend's Canadian Grand Prix I realized that in spite of the intense battle among the Schumacher brothers, Montoya and Alonso I wasn't even remotely considering the possibility that the leading Ferrari would break. Ferraris just don't break! Yet the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve was the car-killer of the season so far, knocking out half the field with mechanical ailments. Gearboxes accounted for four of the ten mechanical retirements, brakes for two and a variety of maladies for the rest. But the Ferraris, Williamses and Alonso's Renault - Trulli retired due to the damage sustained in a crash with Pizzonia - screamed through their 70 laps with total reliability.

That was right in line with the story of the 2003 season at its half-way mark. Overall, with 47 mechanical retirements out of 159 starts, the Formula One field scored a 70-percent finishing percentage. That sounds pretty good. One team, Toyota, is near enough to the average finishing rate at 69 percent. But being close to the average is the rarity. In Formula One, finishing percentages are either commendably high or damnably low.

No prizes for guessing who's best! Ferrari hasn't had a single mechanical breakdown so far in 2003. I have to consider its sole retirement - Barrichello in Brazil, of all places - as mechanical because he ran out of fuel, without which no Grand Prix car can carry on. The cars themselves have been dead reliable, though Michael did admit to a tenderness in the brake department in Canada.

Matching Ferrari with a single retirement so far - a 94-percent finishing rate - are BMW Williams and Renault. Ironically both collected their faults in Austria, a water leak for Williams and an engine failure for Renault. Austria was the toughest race so far on machinery after Canada, with seven retirements. San Marino, Malaysia and Australia were next with six. The least retirements occurred in Brazil - only three, including Rubens's fuel shortage.

With an 88-percent finishing percentage McLaren-Mercedes isn't too far behind. Its two retirements were a gearbox in Canada and electrical problems in Malaysia. This is as we might expect from such a well-seasoned car and engine, carried over from last season. McLaren's problem is simply that its package is now too slow in relation to the new cars from Williams and Ferrari. Canada was mooted as the race in which the MP4/18 might appear; it's now so seriously delayed that the Woking team can all but write off this season.

Worst of all are Jordan-Ford with a disgraceful 44-percent finishing rate. In only one race, Monaco, have the two Jordans managed to escape mechanical failures. There they both finished in double-digit positions. Their ailments are well-distributed, although the drive line takes the brunt of the blame with three engine failures and three more involving the clutch and gearbox. Next in line for poor reliability is Jaguar, with half its entries retiring from mechanical problems for a 50-percent rating. Brakes have presented problems, as have half-shafts on no fewer than three occasions.

Minardi and Sauber rank equally with 56-percent finishing rates, well below average. The Swiss team has suffered three disappointing failures of its Ferrari-supplied Petronas engines plus two uncharacteristic suspension breakages, while the Faenza outfit has specialized in fuel-system glitches and electrical problems. Let's hope that Bernie Ecclestone's injection of funds will help in the second half of Minardi's season.

BAR-Honda is also sub-par with a finishing percentage of 60 percent. Gearboxes have been the culprits twice and a single Honda engine gave up the ghost at Monaco - a random failure if ever there was one. With its even-par finishing rate of 69 percent, Toyota can blame two retirements on its suspension and two on fuel pressure, or lack of it. Repetition of similar failures in successive races - as experienced by Toyota - is not the best indication of a team that is capable of learning from its mistakes.

The season so far does show the major effort that all the teams have made to start their year well with good reliability in the flyaway races. They all realize that the hunt for points must begin at the beginning, especially with the new deeper points structure. And some of them - the biggest stars - have been able to do something about it.

About the author:
Long time columnist at Atlas F1, Karl Ludvigsen is an award-winning author and historian who managed racing programs for Fiat in America in the late 1970s and Ford of Europe in the early 1980s. He is the author of seven books about racing drivers and numerous books about classic racing cars and engines, all of which draw extensively on the many images in his Ludvigsen Library in Suffolk, England. This autumn will see publication of Karl's long-awaited work, the update of his epic Porsche - Excellence was Expected. It reveals for the first time details of the all-conquering McLaren-TAGs and the disastrous Footwork-Porsches. Information on the book and a pre-publication discount are available at the Robert Bentley website