Formula One / Ralph Ellis / 07 February 2012 /

The new F1 season is just around the corner, and Ralph Ellis is of the opinion that Sebastian Vettel is worth opposing for the drivers' championship after some less-than-enthusiastic words from his Red Bull team.

As a football writer I've always loved pre-season. It's a time when nobody has lost a game yet, nobody has any serious injuries, and everybody is relaxed and happy to talk. And it seems it's exactly the same in Formula One.

This is a big time of year, when all the teams are putting their cars on the track for the first time. They've spent months on the drawing board, then in the workshops, and now comes the moment when the truth will emerge. Long before we get to see the cars in action, the teams are starting to face the reality test of what they've done.

For we punters the beauty is they are still in a mood to talk about it, before the corporate communications people kick in. About this time last year, you might remember that Lewis Hamilton drove on a media day to unveil the new McLaren road car and admitted the F1 model wasn't up to pace. We took it as a sign to lay Hamilton for the drivers' championship and boy, did that work well .

This time it is Adrian Newey, Chief Technical Officer of Red Bull, who unveiled their 2012 machine yesterday with this less than glowing endorsement: "We know what we have done through the winter, we know how we have developed the car but we have absolutely no idea what everybody else has done, with the regulation changes and restrictions then it's quite a different game to the end of last year. Have we made as much improvement as others, more, less? It's impossible to know."

He'll start to get a better idea today when the teams start testing in Jerez. Especially he'll wonder about the McLaren which has a totally different nose design to every other car. And meanwhile credit to him for being so honest.

Champion driver Sebastian Vettel is [2.34] for the drivers' title , and even if his top guy has no idea how competitive the car will be then a price that short has to be value to lay. Newey has even explained the technical reason for his uncertainty. Last year's constructors' championship winning car depended heavily, apparently, on a "restriction exhaust outlet position that we were able to develop and perhaps be ahead of the pack."

No, I don't understand what that means either, but I do understand when Newey complains that the rules have outlawed that particular gizmo, leaving his team to come up with a fresh idea that they don't know for sure will work. And meanwhile McLaren's designers have got their own new exhaust system which does meet the latest rules and they reckon will make them faster.

Nobody knows then, but that's the point. Vettel is a brilliant driver but he still depends on the car. And until we know how good it is, why would you back him, across a long season, at little more than even money?

Five things you might not know about Adrian Newey

1. Born on Boxing Day 1958 in Stratford-on-Avon, the son of a vet, he went to posh Repton public school at the same time as Jeremy Clarkson.

2. He was expelled from Repton because he organised a pop concert and turned the amp so loud it smashed a window. Instead he went to college then Southampton University to study aeronautics.

3. He got his first job at Fittipaldi because technical director Harvey Postlethwaite was impressed by his Ducati motorbike when he turned up for the interview.

4. He and Ross Brawn of Mercedes are the only technicians to have won titles with three different teams.

5. He collects sports cars and has driven in the Le Mans Legend races - although as a driver he's a good designer. He wrecked a Ford GT40 in 2006 and then a Jaguar E-Type in a meeting at Goodwood.

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