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Red Bull racing team will go into the new season, starting today, confident that they still have the fastest car on the circuit and with Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber in tandem, it is hard to look any further for the team that will be triumphant at the end of the season.

But you can also never write off the McLaren team, especially with former champions as drivers. Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button will definitely have their say in this year’s championship and also mention will be made of the Ferrari team with Fernando Alonso, who contrived to throw away the title in Abu Dhabi last year.

All in all with the new adjustments to the engines of the cars and the other developments it promises to be a year that will put all race car aficionados on the edge of their seat as the drivers and cars go flying around the corners of the Australia Grand Prix circuit where it will start to the majestic Yas Marina circuit in Dubai.

F1A innovations for the 2011 season

Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems (KERS) is back after a year on the sidewalk. KERS helps to draw more power from the engine whilst the car brakes and this energy is stored in a battery and made available to the driver in fixed quantities per lap via a steering wheel-mounted ‘boost button’.

Cars on average get an extra 80bhp from KERS, which is about 10 per cent more power from the engine. Though this has not been made a compulsory attachment, almost all the racing teams apart from Virgin, HRT and Lotus, have it installed in their cars. Renault has also made individual innovations to its car which includes the forward-facing exhaust while Toro Rosso has a ‘double floor’.

New adjustable rear wings can be moved from the cockpit which lends itself to more speed at corners and when overtaking. These wings will reduce the drag effect on the car it is pursuing. However, there are restrictions to this usage – which will be hard to interpret as the season begins today in Australia – the wings can be used in practice and qualifying, but can only be used during the race if the chasing car is less than a second behind its prey. There will also be pre-determined points where it can be activated. Reports from testing sessions before the season’s opener hint at an additional 12-14kmph to the driver, if used in the right way and it is actually more effective on straight laps.

Now the tyres are specified to become softer so that they will deteriorate at a faster pace – this will create more pit-stops per car per race. And the tyre supplier has been changed from Bridgestone to Pirelli in one of the most glaring adjunct decisions taken by the FIA. There are also more restrictions on the dry weather tyres; also driving styles will come under the microscope.

The clause in the FIA regulations outlawing team orders has been removed. This will definitely attract a re-shuffling of how racing chiefs organise or prioritise the two drivers representing each racing team like what happened between Fernando Alonso and Felipe Massa, where Massa was clearly instructed to slow down for Alonso to overlap.

And at the practise session on Friday, McLaren’s Jenson Button set the fastest time in practice on Friday ahead of team-mate Lewis Hamilton, was in second practice at Albert Park.