The team - who overtook McLaren as the 'best of the rest' behind Ferrari, for what it was worth, last year - looked down and out in the opening six races of the year, after securing just one podium appearance from Montoya, who came second in the Australian Grand Prix.

Schumacher was regularly scoring, reliably posting fourth, fifth, seventh and eighth places but, struggling to get to grips with his qualifying performance, he was not able to get to the sharp end of the field. Montoya, too, had little joy with two retirements preventing him from picking up points.

Then it all changed. Monaco, and the team's first win in the principality in 20 years, put a smile on the faces of the men in blue and white and although they immediately insisted it was a performance they were unlikely to repeat, it ended up being the catalyst that changed the balance of the season.

In Williams's 'post Austria' season of 10 races, they secured four pole positions, with three front-row lockouts, and followed their qualifying performances up with four wins, five second-place finishes and no less than 11 appearances on the podium.

They put it down to finally understanding the complex piece of machinery that they had designed, something that their rivals McLaren-Mercedes failed to achieve throughout the season, to bring themselves back to the level of Ferrari. Whatever they did, it did the trick.

Their performance faltered when it mattered, however, with the demise of the team's Championship hopes bizarrely coinciding with the enforced race retirement of the lucky porcelain pig that had travelled with them throughout most of their successful European summer season.

Their reliability, which saw them post just five retirements, was actually better than Ferrari, whose cars retired six times, and McLaren, whose cars retired nine times, and they coped admirably with a heavy crash for Ralf Schumacher in testing along the way.

As with Ferrari, the way they recovered from their problems, in fact, was key to their season. In their case it was a more gradual and long-term recovery and one that ultimately failed to quite match that of their once dominant counterparts. But they got someway there and the future looks bright once again.

It is commendable, however, how well the team performed with a chassis, the MP4-17, that bore its roots at the start of 2002. The development potential, they said, had been discovered in the winter and they showed there was plenty there as Finn Kimi Raikkonen hauled himself onto the podium no less than ten times.

The car, in fact, scored more points this year than last year with a tally of 65 in 2002 compared to a 2003 total - based on last year's points scoring system - of 100. Sure, Ferrari's faltering and a bit of Michelin magic helped them out, but the fact they kept the old car at the front is impressive in itself.

It is clear, however, that one of the key factors in McLaren's performance was the 'Ice Man' Raikkonen, who claimed 91 of their 142-point total to help them finish just two points shy of Williams-BMW and 16 points off the Ferrari pinnacle. In many races, he dragged the car past where it should have been.

As a dreamer, it would have been nice to see an all-or-nothing effort from McLaren in Japan with the team bringing the fast but risky MP4-18 into play rather than settling for the 'do the best we can' route with the MP4-17D. But McLaren do not dream.

They methodically improve their performance and the failure of the MP4-18 did not fit into their plans. They successfully moved around it, but their season would have ended on a high and a possible World Championship victory if they had got their new car right in time.

They were, however, hampered by misfortune. The original planned debut of the car in Canada was delayed and then two crashes in testing pushed the development further back until they reached the six-week testing ban and gave up to concentrate their efforts on the continued improvement of the old machine.

It was a shame for McLaren that David Coulthard's performances alongside Raikkonen were not up to scratch but at the end of the day it was their failure to introduce the new car that halted their early season success and their achievements in developing their old car that saved their year.

They kept their long-term plan to conquer the sport on track but while many bracketed them comfortably in the 'top four', their Championship tally proves that they were still not quite there, having scored 88 points compared to the 142 points gathered by third-placed McLaren.

It was the second season that Renault has finished fourth and although the gap between them and their third-placed rivals last year was greater this year (42 under last year's scoring method) than it was the previous year (39 points), a deeper look into the statistics shows they have improved significantly.

Their one win at the Hungarian Grand Prix - their first in 20 years and the first since their comeback began two seasons ago - came through performance and superior traction rather than simple good fortune and although their power continued to be found lacking, their low-speed handling was often second to none.

Last year, the team failed to finish on the podium in 34 attempts but this year they secured that breakthrough and finished in the top three on five occasions with one win, one second and three thirds. Their qualifying performances also helped secure their place in the regular top four.

Their reliability was improved too, but still lacking with 10 retirements compared to six for Ferrari, five for Williams and eight for McLaren. But the season, during which they decided to drop their radical wide vee-angle engine concept for next year, was another stepping stone in the grand plan.

An emotionally charged but ultimately successful Japanese Grand Prix put the team firmly out in front of the midfield pack, with the eight points collected pushing them well ahead of Sauber and Jaguar. Fifth was, ultimately, their rightful position.

They scored points in nine of the 16 races, with a double points score in the season finale at Suzuka, and although they failed to get a podium finish, their top scoring finishes of two fourth places and one fifth were higher than their rivals managed.

Villeneuve became increasingly frustrated as he was let down time and again by mechanical failures - eight in all - and he quit the team before the final race of the season to make way for Japan's Takuma Sato, who immediately equalled Villeneuve's best result of the season with sixth place.

Button's car failed him four times; he missed one race and spun out of another. But with 17 points, he propped the team up. They could probably have been closer to Renault if the apparent one-sided atmosphere within the team had not left Villeneuve slumping to a career low.

It was a frustrating waiting year for the team, who put their season-long difficulties down to a poor pre-season performance in their rapidly outdated wind tunnel and constantly referred to their new high-tech facility as they wrote off the present and pinned their hopes on the future.

The Bridgestone-shod team's performances were also hampered by the rise of Michelin and, perhaps, by the necessity for their tyre manufacturer to concentrate on Ferrari. But BAR-Honda, who were to ditch Bridgestone at the end of the year, overtook them as the Japanese tyre manufacturer's second best team.

Last year Sauber scored 11 points with seven top-six finishes. This year they posted just four top-six finishes and only two if the double-scoring windfall in the United States is discounted. If last year was deemed a 'bad year' then this one, for Sauber, was a disaster.

Like BAR-Honda, where Button scored 17 of the team's 26 points, Jaguar was one-sided and even more so with Webber scoring 17 of the team's 18-points season total. But it remains to be seen whether he pushed the car up to places it should not have been or his teammates just could not get the job done.

The crucial differences between the top teams and the midfield runners are pace and reliability and while the Jaguar R4 showed flashes of speed, its 13 retirements - only four of which were down to driver error - did much to hinder their efforts to forge their way to the front of the chasing bunch.

Webber's consistency helped put Jaguar in a similar league to BAR-Honda, with seven top-eight finishes, and Wilson's one giving them the sixth highest number of points finishes. But all but three of those would not have counted in the old scoring system and they need to up their pace to become a strong contender.

They had shown some promising pre-season form but once the racing was underway, they struggled to get to grips with their second season in Formula One. Prior to Monaco the big-budget team posted six retirements from 12 starts and had just three points to show for their massive investment.

Sure, their points scoring continued to disappoint with one-point and two-points finishes being boosted by a seven-point haul from a double points finish in Hockenheim. But their raw speed and qualifying performances in the latter half of the year showed they have something to build on.

They enjoyed just two top-ten pre-Monaco grid positions but in the nine races after that race, their cars started from the first five rows of the grid 14 times from a possible 18. But while the impressive turn-around fed through to the race performance, it did not improve the race results.

The beaming smiles on the team members' faces in Brazil were rapidly replaced by concerned frowns as Jordan, always insistent that their mere survival was never in question, desperately clung onto any way of topping up their coffers as they slowly sunk towards the back of the grid.

Their two drivers posted 15 retirements from 34 starts and only finished in the top ten six times. Aside from the surprise victory, their only points came from eighth place for Ralph Firman in Spain and another rain-affected score for Giancarlo Fisichella in the United States.

Their difficulties were compounded by a heavy crash that sidelined Firman from Grands Prix in Hungary and Italy and they were more in the thick of things off track than on as Jordan fought, and failed, to wrestle money from Vodafone in the courts then saw 49.9 percent of the company bought by new investors.

It typified the Australian's fighting spirit and it is, no doubt, down to his strong will that Minardi have not already been rolled over. They did, however, slump to a new low, increasing the gulf between them and the rest of the pack with a car that was an absolute disaster.

Stoddart was hit hard by sponsor troubles that started with the loss of Gazprom and 40 percent of their budget, continued when they had to hand Justin Wilson to Jaguar to continue their deal with engine supplier Cosworth and ended with him running 'not paid' stickers over another sponsor's logo in the final race.

The commercial strains left Minardi down and as good as out, with the only on-track highlight coming on the Friday of the French Grand Prix when they qualified first because of a rainstorm. No points and only two top-ten finishes said it all.