JULY 30, 2005

Barrichello and Sato at BAR

The folk at BAR may be not be talking openly about a driver line-up of Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button in 2006 but that seems to be the way of thinking. The reality is that Button will struggle to get out of his Williams deal and so we will end up with Barrichello and Takuma Sato at BAR-Honda and Button and Mark Webber at Williams-Cosworth.

The smart money in the F1 paddock is now on Felipe Massa to be drafted in to the available seat at Ferrari and that means that BMW will need to fill a seat alongside Jacques Villeneuve at Sauber. This would be very convenient as Nick Heidfeld is looking for work if Williams does not have a deal for him and so could end up back with the Swiss team. This process of shunting around the current drivers does not create any new gaps for youngsters but with a bigger shake-up likely to come in 2007, we could see a lot of men on the move.