The phoney war of the Formula 1 winter testing season is nearly over and while certainties are few and far between the one thing it does seem we can bet on is that 2009 is going to be the most open season most of us will have seen.

The first thing that strikes me is that the mighty McLaren organisation appears to have comprehensively got the aerodynamics of its 2009 car wrong. Nothing highlights the scale of their problems more than last week when they ran an aerodynamic test using dye to show airflow at an open test event. That was tantamount to giving their rivals access to their wind tunnel. No team has a divine right to success and this is not the first time that McLaren's resources have not helped them master a technical revolution.

In 1992 and 1993, the years of active suspension and every possible driver aid, the engineers at Williams stole a march on their rivals. In fact I would go so far as to say that the 1992 Williams is one of the best cars ever to grace Formula 1. The power advantage conferred on them by the Renault engine does not explain Nigel Mansell finishing the season with more than twice as many points as Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna. Now, Nigel certainly possesses the biggest cojones ever squeezed into Nomex, or as my friend puts it, he was clinically brave, but he was never twice as good as Ayrton Senna. We knew that 1993 was going to be much the same when Senna offered his services to Williams for free. Even if Prost hadn't had an "anyone but Senna" clause in his contract Sir Frank would have been mad to put the two of them together again.

What appears to be unique this year is that unlike 1992 and '93, when McLaren were at least best of the rest with Benetton, this year they seem to be slower than most of their competitors. This year's star performers appear to be Brawn GP (nee Honda). This should be no surprise to us for three reasons. Firstly, Ross Brawn has been there for the full design cycle of this car. Secondly, when it became apparent that the 2008 car was a pig truck word is that they abandoned it to its fate and focussed everything on 2009. Thirdly, Honda and Toyota have hybrid cars in their showrooms today so ever since KERS was announced I have been expecting them to get at least that part of the rule changes right, although Brawn seem to be fast without using KERS at this stage."

Adrian Newey also appears to have produced a tidy little number for Red Bull, and Vettel's times in testing have had the bookies shortening the odds on him winning the title from 33:1 before testing started to as short as 14:1 as I write. There's a reason you don't see too many poor bookies, they don't have a history of getting many calls wrong. When all the pundits and pollsters were predicting an Al Gore win in the 2000 USA presidential race, the bookies predicted Bush.

Now consider this. Today you can get odds as long as 53:1 on Heikki Kovalainen. In a McLaren! The odds on Hamilton are still surprisingly short but then that may be a British effect, as evidenced by the inexplicable 13% of visitors to these august pages who have voted the McLaren as "most impressive so far". Patriotic punters who were wide awake in the gap between the Brawn deal being announced and the car turning a wheel for the first time could have picked up Button at 100:1 before the odds rapidly shortened to 5:1. That's potentially a lot of clamshells.

The proposed change to have most wins and not most points decide the driver's title would have been a significant boost for Lewis and Heikki. It would have meant that they could have afforded a string of finishes outside the points and sill been in contention as long as the bright minds at McLaren got a race-winning car under them before midseason. Retaining the status quo means that Lewis now has nearly zero chance of defending his title unless McLaren make the car capable of at least scoring decent points within 3 races. The upside for Hamilton and Kovalainen is that, with as many potential race winners in the field as winter testing suggests, it seems unlikely that anyone will come out of the first 3 races with 30 points to their name.