It is possible that many - or most - cars will take to the grid for March's 2009 season opener without active KERS systems.

One high-level source a few days ago suggested that BMW Sauber, seemingly the strongest advocate of the new energy-recovery technology, could be the only team committed to using KERS in Australia.

But even the team's driver Robert Kubica, concerned that his excessive height and therefore weight could hinder him in 2009, hints that KERS is far from a closed topic.

2008 constructors' champions Ferrari, openly critical of the voluntary KERS deployment next year, is yet to track test a working system, and admits the development phase has cost 'much more' than initially thought.


"Our goal is to be ready with a working KERS for the first race, meanwhile we're also appraising the car without KERS," Technical Director Aldo Costa admitted.

Given the weight disadvantage of the 2009-style KERS systems, Kubica suggests that Ferrari's approach is not unique.

"We have to see in the later stages when we are closer to the first race which configuration is the quicker one - I think this is the most important issue," the Polish racer told F1's official website.

Source: GMM
© CAPSIS International

I dunno if its just me but the new look of the F1 cars are kinda growing on me

 

I like the look of the new-style cars as well.

Here's what is really bugging me about KERS and F1 in general: they want to cut costs, yet they ask the teams to develop these very complicated and expensive regenerative systems for the cars which are entirely unnecessary. As a result, the teams have to spend a fortune to develop, implement, and test the systems. If anything, F1 should have made KERS the only "spec" piece of the car and found an outside supplier to provide the systems to manufacturers.

Just seems like a very poor allocation of resources when the teams are really trying to cut their budgets down.