Can Jenson Button Be Undone?

The only sure way that Jenson Button can be stopped from winning the 2009 WDC is for me to predict victory for him, just as I screwed Barichello's chances by predicting he would be the top Brawn GP driver. Indeed, Ross Brawn can thank me for his current triumphs, for I confidently predicted he would not be able to translate test pace into race pace.

This gift for getting everything wrong is not something I can boast about too loudly, because it is quite widely shared; take a look back through some musty old Bleacher F1 articles, and enjoy a chuckle at the race previews various people have written.

Having acknowledged that my track record as a sage is distinctly weak, it remains a fact that I cannot stay away from the crystal ball, and I've been thinking about the rest of this season.

Of itself, the fact that Ferrari have yet to score a 2009 point, and that McLaren have only scored one point, would not usually be too significant. We could say they've had a bad start, but they have the muscle to come back and flatten the pretenders to the throne.

This year is different.

Before we next see an F1 race, which will be in China, we should hear the final word on whether 'the diffuser three' of Brawn GP, Toyota, and Williams have been running an FIA legal car or not. If the decision goes against the three, as nobody in the F1 world seems to expect, then those teams will be in big trouble, possibly the sort of trouble that will threaten their survival.

If, on the other hand, the decisions already made by the FIA Technical Comittee, the Melbourne stewards, and the Sepang stewards are endorsed by the FIA's International Court of Appeals on April 14th, then the triple-B axis of Brawn, Button, and Barichello will start to appear an unstoppable juggernaut.

It may safely be assumed that the other teams have designs in progress to catch up on downforce with the diffuser three. Yet the restrictions on both track and wind-tunnel testing will pose some severe problems for them, because they cannot just slot in a new piece at the rear of the car. Their whole aero package will need re-thinking, with a new nose design probably being necessary, and the suspension too will require changes.

They will have to use practice and race time as test time, designing on the hoof as the season progresses. And all the while Brawn GP seem likely to be notching up wins.

The on-track action so far this year has been fine for me, terrific, and I think it has been good for the sport. There will, however, be highly-paid people at Ferrari and McLaren who know they have done their jobs badly, and they will leave no stone unturned in their struggle to regain the initiative.

I want to ask F1 fans this one question: Can Ferrari and/or McLaren get back to the top this year?