- 04 Oct 07, 06:51#16168thing is madbrad, in america the team use off-the-shelf chassis and engines. F1 is different in that teams have been expected to design and build their own cars (this has been the case since the mid 70s), this makes winning immediately VERY unlikely as the team needs to build on the experience of their engineers and designers toyota did ok in their first season as they had the money to spend out on getting experienced highly respected guys before the team took to the task of designing their first car (harvey Postlethwaite among them i think), and if i remember, the car that made it to the track was NOT their first, as they spent a year testing, getting experience for the whole race team and building their knowledge before going grand prix racing with their second car..
however, with the costomer car rule coming in, and Prodrive being able to buy a 2008 McLaren, and toro rosso and super aguri probably buying their parent teams chassis and engines too, there is the possibility of a team winnig straight away, but its still unlikely as these teams cannot afford top line experienced drivers, engineers or mechanics to take a standard chassis, and prefect the setup to be quick at every race..
Toro Rosso is proof of this, they have out performed their parent Red Bull only a couple of times, but even then you have to take into account that they are using a different engine, so the weight distribution, suspension and gearbox all make a difference, but they have been unable to do it consistently. Super Aguri, although they have out-performed the Honda squad more times, cannot be compared as they are using last years race winning chassis, with developments, while Honda are using a very problematic chassis.
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