Formula One / Ralph Ellis / 14 March 2012 /

The new season is upon us and, while we can't be sure who will be in the best shape come Sunday afternoon in Australia, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button are making encouraging noises about the McLaren car.

Regular readers may remember we developed a simple, two word rule that governed most of our betting during the latter part of the 2011 Formula One series: "Back Vettel".
The German delivered 11 race wins in all, and started 15 of the 19 Grand Prix events in pole position as Red Bull delivered a car that was way ahead of any other team.

Amazingly, every time he made an error which cost him a race his odds went out wildly for the next one and left us to clean up. If it was still 2011, I'd say to apply the rule again ahead of the first race in Melbourne on Sunday. He's [2.16] to start the season on pole and [2.56] to win the Australian Grand Prix, offering the tempting prospect of [3.2] in the early market for the qualifying/winner double.

But here's the thing. It's not 2011, it is 2012, and while the leading drivers are the same, their cars are going to be different. How different? Until this weekend we just don't know.
Don't take my word for that, either. Mark Webber says exactly the same thing in his column on the BBC's website this morning. Vettel's last day of testing in Barcelona went badly wrong when some new gadgets the engineers tried out failed to perform as expected, and as the Aussie says: "You all want to know who is in the best shape, but at the moment it is just a lot of hearsay and talk. We really don't know if we have done enough."

What we do know is that Lewis Hamilton has been talking in bullish terms about the new McLaren car, which is encouraging because he tends to be pretty honest first thing in the season - and Jenson Button has echoed those upbeat comments. We know that Ferrari have worked hard to give Fernando Alonso something more competitive to drive. And the testing times in the new Lotus suggest Kimi Raikkonen is returning with the fire and ambition that he'd lost when he walked away from the sport in 2009. But beyond that the exact potential of each car is unknown from favourite Vettel right the way down to Marussia Racing's new hopeful Charles Pic.

It also seems that Webber himself will be in a better frame of mind this year after taking a good rest over the winter, but also pushing himself through an arduous fitness programme. His win in Brazil on the final day of the season gave him back his taste for standing on top of the podium, and according to Red Bull boss Christian Horner he's come back lighter, fitter and more relaxed for a new campaign.

Put all those things together and - for the start of the season at least - we might need to make a one word change to our golden rule and this is it: "Lay Vettel"!

Five things you might not know about Charles Pic
1. Born February 1990 in Montelimar, his family own the Groupe Charles André conglomerate of transport companies who have the contract to move Elf oil products around France.

2. His godfather is former F1 driver Eric Bernard who raced between 1989 and 1994 for Larrousse, Ligier and Lotus - who bought Charles his first kart when he was aged 12.

3. Brought into the Renault Young Driver Development programme in 2009, he spun off the track during the parade lap before his first race for the Tech1 team in Barcelona.

4. He's made it all the way to the grid in Melbourne without ever finishing a motorsport series higher than third. Last season he briefly led the GP2 standings before slipping back to finish fourth.

5. His younger brother Arthur is also a racing driver - he made his debut in the Formula Renault 3.5 series last year. We don't expect that has anything to do with the family's money, either!

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