It's that time of year again. For first time readers, and for old-timers who may have forgotten, I like to evaluate factories in their preparation on cars for shipment to specific race venues, and traveling mechanics in their setting-up cars for local conditions. Last year, I did this quarterly, and since it seems to have worked or at least been somewhat insightful, I see no reason to do things differently this year.

The method I employ in my analysis is actually quite simple. The best indicator of how well each team's factory did in preparing cars for competition is to rank the teams in regard to how well their cars performed during the opening practice session for each race. To illustrate, at the season opener in Melbourne, Australia, the Williams drivers Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve had an average position of 10th following Friday morning's practice session. This was fifth best of the 11 teams. The Arrows of Jos Verstappen and Ricardo Rosset had an average position of 15.5, which was 9th best. In order to determine how well each team's pit crew did improving on what the factory had delivered to the race, the teams were ranked in regard to their average position on the starting grid. Again, relying on the Team Willey at Australia, Hill and Villeneuve had an average grid position of 1.5, which was the best of all teams. Frank Williams's traveling mechanics clearly did a great job. They not only managed to improve their cars such that they moved up eight and one-half places on the grid, but they picked-up four full places over their competitors.

To date, I have tracked the performance of each team's factory and pit crew for each of the first four races. I have also calculated the performance of each team over the course of the first quarter of the season. This is, in effect, an aggregated summary. I plan to do the same for the next three quarters, and I plan to do a season summary. I will not present all the data in each quarterly report or update, but instead plan to average rankings for the quarter, and I plan to discuss some of the more significant occurrences. What follows here is a summary of the grand prix season to date, including the races in Australia, Brazil, Argentina, and Europe.

How well did the factories do their job during the winter? This is, arguably, evident in the rankings of the very first practice session of the season. The rankings are as follows: 1. Ferrari, 2. Benetton, 3. Sauber, 4. Jordan, 5. Williams, 6. Ligier, 7. Tyrrell, 8. McLaren, 9. Arrows, 10. Minardi, 11. Forti. Ferrari being at the top of the heap might come as a bit of a surprise to some, but nobody in Italy. All winter long, Ferrari kept telling everyone how great things were about to be. Sauber doing so well is a much bigger surprise. What happened? I really don't know, and don't really care. The first quarter of the season has thus far proven this ranking to be something of a fluke. And, speaking of flukes, Williams turning in such a poor off-season can be considered nothing else. By the end of the Australian Grand Prix, the team clearly demonstrated that their performance in the opening session was anomolous.

The average rankings for the intial practice sessions for the first four races changed markedly from those of the first race alone. They are as follows:

Clearly, the factories of Williams, McLaren, and Arrows got better at delivering cars to races, while Ligier, Jordan, and Sauber did less than admirable jobs. Ain't Italy a country of pardox? Ferrari did the best job of building cars during the winter and during the first quarter, while Forti did the worst job. Go figure.

The starting grid of each race are well-recorded and, therefore, do not, for the sake of all our sanities, require discussion here. The four-race composite starting grid is, of course, not so well-known. Here it is:

These are some interesting figures as they show some peculiar groupings. Note, that Williams is in a class by itself. The team has an average starting position 3.5 positions better than any other team. The next group consists of Ferrari, and Benetton. McLaren, and Jordan comprise a third groups. Sauber is another team in a class by itself. Actually, it is probably in a time warp--a lot worse than the best, and a lot better than the worst. The final group consists of what Bob Balling would surely call the bottom-feeders. They don't merit discussion. Case closed.

A comparison of the qualifying rankings with those of the practice sessions suggests that some team's pit crews did a better job than others. For specific races, some crews did exceptional job of preparing their cars. To illustrate, in Argentina, McLaren picked-up an average of 3.5 places. Similarly, Williams gained 6.0 places in Brazil. On the other end of the spectrum, some pit crews did a particulary crappy job; taking a car and having it perform worse than when it first arrived. Ligier's traveling mechanics, for example, cost the team 3.5 places in Australia, Tyrrell squandered 5 places in Argentina, and Arrows dropped 7 places in Europe. The most consistently good pit crew was that of Frank Williams. Gosh. Who would have thunk it?

The four-race composite difference between initial practices and starting grid positions is as follows:

Only three teams had pit crews that that really improved on their factories efforts. Given that these are aggregated figures, Williams big improvement in Brazil skewed things dramatically. Somewhat surprisingly, Ferrari didn't do well, but Forti did. I guess, in the latter case, if you don't have much to work with, you can't get any worse. Ligier's demise is most apparent and unfortunate. France deserves at least one good team. Okay, it deserves at least a team. Ferrari continues to suffer from not having a good pit crew. Ron Dennis has a crew that holds its own, and Eddie Jordan has one that is certainly meritorious.

The saga will continue with Part 2 of this series appearing in the Canadian Grand Prix issue.