For Renault, since their mass Damper system got banned in the middle of 2006 and they went from Michelins to Bridgestone, they have just never looked the same.
They haven’t made the recovery that they hoped for.
These new regs are the opportunity they need in order to start matching the top teams again. With experience like Pat Symonds the team should be in good hands and do a good job.
However if Mclaren and Ferrari make a strong car and the promise of Honda and Red Bull come to fruit, I think Renault may well be stuck where they are, or even slip back further. Renault haven’t got the biggest budget out of the teams and this may well pull them up short. I also question the passion of the big guys at Renault behind the F1 operation, since they have drifted away from being a championship winning team.
Force India have improved under new ownership and the expertise of Mike Gascoyne.
Again they are going to improve, but with the talent and large budgets ahead of them, it's still going to be extremely difficult to move ahead of the teams ahead of them, unless one of them makes a real mess of adapting to the new rules.
So to finish off this section I am going to make a bold prediction on the order of the teams at the first race in 2009:
McLaren
Red Bull, Honda, Ferrari
BMW
Toyota, Torro Rosso, Renault
Williams
Force India
How will the drivers adapt?
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