The season of whipping the covers off this year's F1 cars has arrived replete with predictable sound bytes hyping the competitive potential of each team's offerings. Nothing new there.

After all, sponsorship coves have laboured hard garnering funds and it is a function of this game that the teams start a new year by issuing reams of blathering waffle intended to reassure sponsors that their investment is a sound one. The odd, if not wildly optimistic, hint at the hope of a championship by year's end is not out of place in such rhetoric.

I regard a high water mark in this meaningless pre-season propaganda as the 1999 arrival of British American Racing (BAR) with its "Tradition of Excellence" slogan. An interesting choice of words for a team in its maiden year even if it was born of the picked-over bones of Ken Tyrell's fine outfit. 1999 did not result in any championships for BAR. In fact it would take 2 subsequent ownership and name changes, 3 different engine suppliers and 10 years before a championship was won by a Brackley offering.

So what do I deduce from the long-rear-finned things set to contest this year's world championship based on the team's PR? NOTHING of course. But then I didn't just authorise a cheque for a few million pounds in favour of an F1 team so who among the team's PR pundits would care much about what I think?

Curiously, F1's ruling body chose this year to ban refuelling during a Grands Prix. I think I read the reasons behind this decision but summarily dismissed them in much the same way as I disregard the team's pre-season PR. It may have had something to do with making for better racing but after nearly two decades of hearing that one, I've given up.

I say curiously because the FIA has made a big deal about it's commitment to the Green cause in recent years and I, for one, am struggling to reconcile the no refuelling rule with a greener world.

The FIA's rules for F1 have seldom, if ever, overtly rewarded fuel efficiency. For a very long time, F1 cars have run to the sort of mile-per-gallon numbers that would cause most of the motoring public to shy away from purchasing a vehicle that exhibited such appalling fuel efficiency. Indeed there are cases whereby gallons-per-mile would be a more useful measurement.

Yet at the zenith of the public's awareness of the need to be green, the FIA has introduced a significant new rule that compels teams to find ways to waste fuel during safety car periods.

Under the old rules, teams used yellow flag periods behind the safety car to conserve fuel and advantage their pitstop strategies. Under the new rules, a number of team spokespeople have already made it clear that when the safety car appears, teams will do their utmost to burn off unwanted fuel weight. Which is to say, WASTE FUEL.

Way to go FIA, that's a really Green move. Is it just me or are there others out there wondering exactly what the FIA's motives are and whose interests they are serving?

As previously stated, I've been waiting years for the FIA to deliver a rule package that made F1 an interesting competitive sport to watch. That includes the years when the FIA's long-time president was vocal about the fact that the racing had never really been as interesting as anyone's memory suggested, before said president did a back-flip and started telling us how much the sport needed to be interesting to its fans because it had all gotten a bit boring and dull.