Forged from the remnants of Minardi, Toro Rosso is Red Bull's junior F1 team. The arrangement lets Red Bull (a) try out unproven young drivers and (2) take cocky french multiple Champ Car champions down a peg or two.

The team benefits from an unspecified amount of help from its senior team but is still free to plough its own furrow. In 2007, for instance, it used Ferrari engines rather than the Renault power units favoured by Red Bull, which proved, if nothing else, that the Ferrari team must have had one hell of a chassis.

Toro Rosso has yet to inspire the same level of support enjoyed by Minardi, although it was on the right lines when a senior manager occasioned a physical assault upon the wholly objectionable Scott Speed. Keep it up, lads, and we'll put our not inconsiderable weight behind you.

A phenomenally successful F1 team which won nine constructors' titles in 20 years (it took Ferrari 50 years to do the same) but which usually dispenses with the services of the drivers who win the title for them: Alan Jones, Nelson Piquet, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Damon Hill all took championships and then left the team at the end of the year, for one reason or another.

The team hit a purple patch in the 1990s, when a combination of Adrian Newey's ground-breaking designs, some jolly clever electronics and a handful of half-decent drivers resulted in repeated title wins. The 1992 and 1993 Williams are probably the most technologically advanced Formula One cars to date and you could almost say that they drove themselves, without wishing to devalue the titles that Mansell and Prost won with them, of course.

This period also produced the iconic blue and white Rothmans livery, which looked great but which was probably responsible for shifting truckloads of their cigarettes. The team did attempt to make amends later, however, by running cars plastered with stickers for Niquitin and thereby promoting something to help you give up what they'd been urging you to become addicted to a few years previously.

For the 2004 season, the Williams challenger sported a highly unusual "walrus nose", which did nothing for the car's performance but which did at least mean that Ralf Schumacher was no longer the ugliest thing in the paddock. The innovative nose proved uncompetitive and was replaced by something more conventional in the second half of the year. Ralf also proved uncompetitive and was replaced by someone more talented at the end of the year.

Founded by the Kiwi Bruce McLaren in 1963, Bruce McLaren Motor Racing merged in 1981 with the Project 4 team, which was being run by the barn owl Ron Dennis. The team is now part of McLaren Racing, a member of the McLaren Group, under the umbrella of McLaren Holdings, a subsidiary of McLaren PLC, which is wholly owned by McLaren (World Domination) Ltd.

Bruce McLaren is currently the only driver to have won a Formula One world championship race in a car bearing his own name as a constructor*, although the dotdotdotcomma-sponsored driver Panasonic Toyota, currently racing a borrowed Caterham with limited success, is optimistic of one day becoming the second.

The team has rapidly become one of the most successful in F1 history and is widely regarded as technologically top-notch, if sometimes a little fragile operationally. They are constantly trying to persuade everyone that they may be stiff and corporate but they still know how to have a good time. It's not terribly convincing.

They're far from unemotional, however, and Ron Dennis can often be glimpsed furtively wiping away a tear or two of joy. In fact, when one of his favoured drivers has won against seemingly insuperable odds during a troubled time for the team, it can sometimes be hard to hear the national anthems over the sound of Ron's blubbing.

*Other than, we've just realised, Jack Brabham. Who also won the world championship. Arse. Rest assured, our research team will be hung, drawn and quartered. Or should that be "hanged"?