A rampant first half of the season showed that despite all this, they remained the team to beat. Even in the second half, when Ferrari threw the kitchen sink at the them, and officialdom seemed to collude against them, they never wavered and took their eyes of maximising every opportunity. The team honourably backed Alonso to the very end. Their tactical ingenuity often surpassed Ferrari's, most notably in France, and Flavio Briatore remained the most consummate politician in pit lane.

The facts in the end speak for themselves. Alonso and the team recorded the same number of victories as the year before, although this year featured one fewer race. Both Alonso and Giancarlo Fisichella outscored their tally from 2005. The team didn't get the best out of Fisichella, but that's not necessarily their fault. There were only 3 race mechanical failures, and 32 points finishes from 36. It was a near-perfect year in terms of championship-winning consistency, even if they weren't always the fastest car.

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For some moments in the first half of the season, and for most of the second half, the Ferrari was the car to beat. What they couldn't emulate, however, was the ruthlessness of pre-2005 Ferrari. That mantle had gone to their rivals Renault. For two-thirds of the year Felipe Massa could not provide enough support and had too many wild moments. Michael Schumacher still made his occasional mistakes, and the team didn't handle the Monaco debacle and Schumi's retirement speculation in the most elegant way.

But it was on two fronts in particular that Ferrari lost ground. One was engine reliability with the new V8, with problems in Malaysia and most notably Japan proving costly. The other was in terms of strategy. The team's lack of intervention in Malaysia, Hungary and Turkey, whilst laudable from a sporting perspective, cost Schumacher valuable points. In the end, it was a fine rebound and a worthy sign-off year for Schumacher, Ross Brawn and Paolo Martinelli, but being pipped for both titles was not the dream finale.

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Previously, Sauber's greatest bugbear was that they would have a competitive chassis early in the season, but there would be no development as the year wore on. With BMW ownership and cash, that was no longer a problem. Although there were some off-colour weekends, like San Marino, Monaco and Germany, usually they were on the fringes of the top 10 in qualifying and in the hunt for the minor points. 19 times out of 36 attempts they participated in the third segment of qualifying, and they finished with 36 points.

Most impressive, though, was their last third of the season. They had been in the hunt for Friday honours all year, first with Robert Kubica and then with Sebastian Vettel, but when the opportunity came to finally dispatch Villeneuve, Kubica stepped up to the plate in spectacular fashion. It rejuvenated Heidfeld and the rest of the team, and despite the speed not always being backed up by results, like in Turkey and Brazil, on pace alone they were giving the likes of McLaren, Honda and Toyota some real headaches.

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They made it to Bahrain with two cars, and got Sato to the finish. By Australia, Taku ran the first part of the race in the midfield, ahead of Barrichello in the works Honda. Super Aguri were a constant work in progress, putting new parts on the cars at every race, and even bringing out a new car for the last seven races of the year. It culminated in that amazing Brazilian GP, when they came 7th and 9th in the fastest lap standings, and Sato finished 10th ahead of Red Bulls, Toro Rossos and Spyker MF1s.

Sure, the team had their fair share of mechanical difficulties as well as scrapes and bingles. Sure, at one stage it was rumoured that Aguri Suzuki and managing director Daniele Audetto were not on good terms, but that seemed to be resolved. Sure, they had trouble in the second car with on Franck Montagny shining but Yuji Ide and Sakon Yamamoto struggling. But in twelve months, they had gained the entire pit lane's respect, and they had taken over from Minardi as everyone's second-favourite team.

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The win of course did finally come in the odd circumstances of Budapest. Mission accomplished, right? Look past the sound-bytes, though, and surely this could not be a serious team if they didn't have championship intent. And from that point of view 2006 was a bit disappointing. From early in the season, they were in 4th in the constructors points, unchallenged from behind and unable to challenge McLaren ahead, let alone Renault and Ferrari. In short, there was no escaping that they were only fourth best.

On the up-side, there seemed to be real cohesion between Nick Fry and Gil de Ferran's leadership, Geoff Willis' technical expertise, and Jenson Button as the undisputed lead driver. Apart from the odd wonky round mid-season, most notably in France, the RA106 package was a consistent points-scorer, and a nice step forward. But they couldn't stroke the best out of Rubens Barrichello all season, and their overall position in the field was below what we know their expectations really are. Whatever the spin-doctors say.

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Only really in Monaco, Canada, Italy and China did the car show anything like winning pace. Some will look at the team's finishing record and think that reliability was once again poor. However, Kimi Raikkonen only suffered two race mechanical failures (albeit at Monaco and Shanghai when he was in real contention), and the other car only had three between Juan-Pablo Montoya and Pedro de la Rosa. Trouble was, eight DNFs were caused by either collisions or crashes.

Strategically, the team never found a happy medium. They started the year running heavy fuel loads and conservative tactics that compromised track position. Later in the year, Raikkonen was taking poles but on unsustainably lightish fuel loads. Montoya's mid-season departure was a distraction, but must surely have also been partly caused by the early signing of Alonso for 2007 and all that that said about McLaren's faith in JPM. It was McLaren's first winless year since 1996, and that was unsatisfying.

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It depended on which way you looked at it. With the injection of cash and virtually last year's Red Bull chassis, they were further up the field than where Minardi had been. At some races, like Australia, America, and several races at the end of the year, they were on level terms with the senior team. But the rev-limited V10 gave them little or no advantage regardless of the noises MF1 made, and development on the chassis and the engine was limited as the year went on.

Overall, a solitary point from the race of attrition at Indianapolis was probably less than what they hoped for. Nevertheless, Franz Tost and Gerhard Berger ran a tight and respectable operation, but one wonders if they could have done more to nurture their two drivers. Both have talent and pace to some degree, but both made too many errors all season, and it felt like these rough diamonds weren't being smoothed. It all made for an ongoing B-team feel, that this was a squad of apprentices, discards and off-cuts.

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His replacement by Pascal Vasselon seemed to be a political appointment. In Formula One, building momentum is an important factor, and Toyota have had more managerial and technical upheaval since they entered the sport five seasons ago than just about any other team. And therein lies the problem. The money is there, the pressure from head office in Tokyo is there, but inspiration is in short supply. It was reflected in the rather faceless years that both Ralf and Jarno Trulli had on the track.

Through a combination of incidents and mechanical problems, Trulli could chain no more than three finishes in a row, Schumacher no more than four. For the majority of the season they qualified in and around the top 10, but as a general trend when they started well they dropped back, and when they started further down they could charge into the points. They didn't seem to understand the Bridgestone tyres that they had switched to either. All told, a directionless season for a seemingly directionless (but filthy rich) team.

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It was difficult to see where they were heading. At first they comfortably gapped Super Aguri, as they should have done, but by year's end the Japanese upstarts had caught up. Only 8 times all season did they appear in segment two of qualifying, and only at Indy did both cars make it. Reliability was also comparatively poor. Although occasionally Christijan Albers in particular could dice with the Toro Rossos and Red Bulls, MF1's season was spent going nowhere, and not getting there particularly quickly either.

They used five different Friday drivers, whose main purpose was to bring money rather than develop the car. Despite his fatuous denials, speculation all year was rife that Alex Shnaider was going to sell, confirming that F1 had simply been an expensive frolic. The eventual sale to boutique Dutch sports car marque Spyker thus came as no surprise. There can be something very charming about backmarker teams, but that often stems from the team owner's passion for racing. Symonds was probably right to say that MF1's bosses had rather little.

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It's debatable how much Newey could have done with this year's car, being one he didn't design. But the point is that, although the team's season steadied, with the highlight being Monaco where Christian Klien should have, and David Coulthard did record the their first podium, from about that point on they simply meandered until the end of the year, with hardly any investment in developing the car. In the tail-end of the season, they were battling with the Toro Rossos, and that simply should not have been.

Coulthard especially was able to sneak the occasional respectable result, but Red Bull only made it into the third segment of qualifying five times all season. Their apathy flowed through to the drivers, with neither DC, Klien, or Robert Doornbos late in the year inspired to do their best. Their anonymity at most events was startling, and that in itself was frustrating, especially after some giant-killing performances last year. As fans we love to see teams giving their all, all the time, and Red Bull simply wasn't doing that.

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The double-retirement at Sepang in the early laps, though, signalled the beginning of a disaster. It went endlessly downhill from there, with atrocious reliability. Hydraulics, engines, gearboxes, exhausts, throttles, tyres, halfshafts and electrics all failed during races, while five collisions and other driving errors added to the DNF litany. The trouble was, different problems were appearing each race, and often they struck whilst the cars were in very competitive positions, for example in Australia, Monaco and Germany.

Their 10-race drought without a point was their worst ever, as was 8th place overall with only 11 points. Under the pre-2003 points system, they would have only scored 2 points! By year's end, Alex Wurz's Friday testing efforts made little impact, relations with Mark Webber had soured, and the cars were no longer competitive as a lack of aero grip could not be resolved, despite backroom shuffling. Having returned to privateer status, we knew that development would be a problem, but we didn't expect things to be this bad.

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