Alrighty, someone gave me this idea after informing us on Will's trifecta that they guess the F1 drivers so I thought I'd try to help out a bit.

First things first; the teams and drivers to beat. Ferrari (Kimi Raikonnen and Felipe Massa), BMW (Nick Heidfeld and Robert Kubica) and McLaren (Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen) were the 'big three' last year and the only things that has happened this season is that BMW have closed the gap a bit and Kovy replaced Fernando Alonso at McLaren...so not much change then.

Ferrari look like they are slightly ahead of McLaren in terms of outright pace (I believe the Maccas just missed the setup badly in Bahrain) and of their two drivers, you'd have to say Kimi has the edge given the fact that he won the Championship last season and Felipe tends to have brainfades every now and then. McLaren are a little tighter to pick...Lewis has a full season with the team behind him but Kovy is Finnish and that means he'll shine in a Macca (just like Mika Hakkinen and Kimi did before him...Keke Rosberg didn't fit the McLaren mould in 1986 so he's not being counted) but even so, I'd have to favour Lewis based on his 2007 form, but only just. The BMW's have the second hardest pairing to seperate with both Kubica and Nick showing on any given day they can beat the other. As biased as I am toward Nick, I would have to say that Robert appears to be the slightly better all round driver (qualy and race) but if you had to pick one to come through the field, you'd have to go with Nick.

The second tier of teams see a battle between Toyota (Jarno Trulli and Timo Glock), Red Bull (David Coulthard and Mark Webber), Renault (Fernando Alonso and Nelson Piquet Jr) and Williams (Nico Rosberg and Kazuki Nakajima). All four teams are fighting it out for the final two points paying positions assuming the top 3 teams don't strike problems in the race. Of the four, only Red Bull appear to have 'equal' lineups as Jarno, Fernando and Nico look to be clear number 1 drivers for the other three teams. Mark has the qualifying pace while DC seems to be better during the race...not much to pick between the two then since qualifying is vital in F1 but as Mark tends to have all the bad luck, you'd have to favour DC over the course of the season.

Best of the rest...well, Honda is doing their best to recapture their 2006 form when Jenson Button scored both his and the teams first win and with Rubens Barrichello as wingman, on paper the team looks to have the goods. However, 2007 was a truly horrible year and even with Ross Brawn on board, I can't see them consistantly challenging the second tier teams until the last quarter of this season. Toro Rosso are really the only other team likely to upset the apple cart on occasion with Sebastian Vettel and Sebastien Bourdais having the pace but the car seems to be far too fragile to keep up on Sundays. I'd have to give the nod to both Jenson and Bourdais to outpace their teammates but really, you'd have to pick the right week if you want a good score in Will's trifecta.

The lingo; vitally important since F1 is European while you follow NASCAR...so here's a few explanations for you.

- "oversteer" is the same as a "loose" condition.
- "understeer" is the same as the car being "tight".
- "neutral" is the same as being "snug"...which is the condition you'd want if you want to pull away from the cars behind you.
- "huge shunt" means a crash of Michael McDowell at Texas proportions.
- "they cranked on some front wing during that stop" means the team added angle to the front wing to assist in front downforce and reduce understeer. This is mainly done in qualifying or if rain comes during the race...yes, these guys race in the wet using something called a "wet weather tyre" which is a foreign concept in NASCAR but provides great racing.
- "incident involving car X is under investigation" equates to "driver of car X better get his butt into gear and go faster since he's about to cop a drive through penalty for doing something stupid".

That's pretty much it for the basics in F1...hopefully they make sense and feel free to ask questions, preferably to bc525 or jbroomy since they know more than me :P