Two things in particular are making this season especially unpredictable. The first is that all four leading squads have a question mark hanging over their heads. Ferrari may still be at a disadvantage by sticking with Bridgestones; both Williams drivers are not exactly flavour of the month; McLaren's MP4/19 based on the radical but stillborn MP4/18 is still suffering reliability and horsepower issues; Renault may have ditched their wide angle engine, but their transition powerplant is based on the Mecachrome of 1999!

The second is that F1 is all about aerodynamics these days, and not for a long time have the leading teams all gone for fundamentally different approaches in that area. Ferrari's F2004 looks similar to last year's F2003-GA, but has sprouted mid-wings; Williams have gone for the ugly - but potentially very effective - walrus nose; McLaren have gone for a front-end treatment so narrow and low it's almost the first non-shark nose car since 1996; Renault's R24 is bulbously aggressive in contrast to the sleek McLaren MP4/19.

What's more, there are those saying that 2004 may not just be a four horse race. BAR have shown incredible form with their new car, now on Michelins, and some have suggested that Jenson Button might sneak a lot of podiums if not even a victory, ironically as the team makes a fresh start in the post-Villeneuve era. The Sauber is so Ferrari-like, many are asking how they could not be highly competitive at some events. Jaguar have shown late testing form, and Toyota's resources cannot be discounted.

But, notably, the promise that 2004 will be ultra-close is the direct result of teams refining their packages and edging up to the once-peerless Ferrari. It is certainly not to do with the new rules for 2004. Indeed, the new rules for this year seem to have been a misguided attempt to balance the dual objectives of spicing up the show on one hand, but reducing costs on the other. Only the banning of launch control and the upping of the pit speed limit (to encourage more varied pit strategies) seem well-founded.

How is that meant to add to the spectacle, unless watching young talents like Anthony Davidson and Bjorn Wirdheim is your thing? Perhaps, subtly, Max Mosley and Bernie Ecclestone have achieved their goal of a two-day race meeting! Also, loopholes surrounding what constitutes an engine change, and confusion over who's been driving which car and using which engine and whose tyres, mean that 2004 might not just be exciting on the track, it may be very litigious and hard to follow off it as well.

The new double-qualifying on the Saturday means that, unless teams feel confident that they can maximise the set-up time between their two runs, they may do both laps on race fuel. Or, at any rate, the first runs will be very conservative, lest anyone stop on the track and be forced to change car and thus engine. Sadly, in 2004 we will never get a low-fuel hot lap comparison between the relative pace of all the cars. But imagine how much brain-racking there will be if there's the possibility of rain during the session!

It's one thing for the FIA to try to introduce some unpredictability, but you still want meritorious results, not random ones. What we don't want is for the championship battle between Michael Schumacher, Juan-Pablo Montoya, Ralf Schumacher, and Kimi Raikkonen, and maybe even Fernando Alonso, Rubens Barrichello and David Coulthard as well, to be decided by a bad throw of the dice. At the end of the day, the 2004 World Champion should be a worthy one.

At the other end of the grid, the rookie list of Christian Klien, Giorgio Pantano, Gianmaria Bruni and Zsolt Baumgartner looks relatively unspectacular, but that's not all that's new for 2004. This year will see two exciting debutant tracks in Bahrain and China, plus the return of Spa, and the most revamped calendar for a long time, including the longest championship yet at 18 events. And, who knows, by year's end we may be heralding a brand new World Champion as well...