New Rules for Formula One...In English!

Well, we have a week until the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, and while many people find Formula One to be a parade with very little, if any, overtaking, I find it to be another season of changes, both in drivers and rules.

In drivers, Fernando Alonso has returned to the Reggie, with a new GP2 graduate teammate in Nelson Piquet Jr., kicking out Giancarlo Fisichella to the new Force India team and swapping Finn Heikki Kovaleinen to McLaren, while Kazuki Nakajima has become a permanent driver for Williams (Possibly in a deal with Toyota to have a Japanese driver on the team). For the fledgling Toyota team, Timo Glock will take the place of Ralf Schumacher, at a savings of about $23 million for the team. Ralf Schumacher has left Formula One to drive in the DTM series with Mercedes-Benz. Finally, ChampCar's champion, Sebastien Bourdais, will team up with Sebastien Vettel at Scuderia Toro Rosso.

When it comes to rule changes, the most notable being is that there is no more traction control, so be prepared to see more driver errors.

As well, a gearbox has to last for four Grands Prix, but it can be opened up to change gear ratios. Should a gearbox need to be changed before the four Grands Prix are up, there will be a penalty of five grid places.

For safety reasons, and to avoid a scene similar to, or worse than last year's Australian GP, the cockpit has been slightly modified in order to protect the driver's head. We wouldn't want to see a driver's near-decapitation or worse!

For the environment, a minimum of 5.75 percent of the fuel used on the cars has to be a biofuel of some sort. Quite a step forward from last year when it was found that all but one team's (their logo has the letter 'H' in it!) commitment to the environment was lip-service, and nothing more. Maybe I am just an idealist, but I do believe that with the introduction of biofuel sources into Formula One, it could help create alternative fuels for our regular road cars, but that might take a while.

In conjunction with fuel, it should be noted that the "fuel-burning phase" in the final stages of qualifying has pretty much been tossed aside with the shortening of the third round of qualifying to just 10 minutes. As well, cars that make it to the final round cannot be fueled up after qualifying.

 So, overall, the FIA likes to mix things up a bit, and hopefully we can see some interesting results, like a Super Aguri, provided they survive the entire season, lead a race at some point. An interesting season looms ahead for us all to watch. Enjoy!