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The standout rookie so far has been Sebastien Bourdais, the French reigning F3000 champion. He's taken both poles, but has made some silly msitakes, that he should remove from his driving pretty soon. Mario Haberfeld, of the new Conquest team, has been extremely fast, but his driving tactics are a little excessive. Englishman Darren Manning has the advantage of driving for the established Walker team (compared to Haberfeld, Montiero and Lemarie, at least), but he's looked very impressive. Montiero and Yoong also look like worthy additions, the others are basically making up the numbers.
Rocketsports seem extremely impressive so far, and look likely to be the first new team to challenge for a win. American Spirit look a little disorganised, and its been Jimmy's experience that has helped. Conquest, and the satellite team Emmo's running, have been superb considering the lack of experience and preparation, I think they made the right choice in switchign from the IRL. PK seem hamstrung by their poor choice of driver though there is potential.
There's been some great overtaking, although not at all points in the races. Wheel-to-wheel scrapping is still a regular thing. The first half of the Monterrey race was alittle dull, but things really improved after that, especially the duels between Manning, Vasser and Dominguez.
Most of the IRL movers have showed themselves to have put money ahead of racing, and the low attendances and poor publicity (despite the Tony George publicity machine doing what it can) show that they've lost out in that sense. All the same, it'd be great to see a full field fo the best drivers and teams all against each other.
I hope next season is more of the same, hopefully with more new teams (Arden and Brand (from F3000)) are both hoping to run occasional races this eyar as a prelude to full 2004 campaigns), Dixon and maybe Franchitti returning, and more races in Europe, but, sadly, lots of street races in the US.
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