The overture to the 2011 Formula One season reads more than ever like the outline for a Hollywood movie. Combine the dreadful injuries that will keep the popular and talented Robert Kubica out of action for much of the season, the arrest of a German banker over a $50m kickback allegedly paid when the sport's commercial rights changed hands, a fight between two teams over a single name and the shadow cast across the start of the season by the cancellation of the opening round in Bahrain and the scriptwriters hardly needed new revelations concerning Bernie Ecclestone's private life to create a compelling, multilayered narrative even before the 24 cars form up on the first grid of the season.

Under the aegis of the 80-year-old Ecclestone, the sport can be guaranteed to provide a running soap opera complete with enough heroes, villains, scandals and sub-plots to keep the headlines flashing when the engines are silent. After an obstacle-strewn start, however, the coming campaign promises a renewal of the battle between arguably the best crop of championship contenders ever assembled, including five past or present holders of the title. Their contest is made even less predictable by a set of new technical challenges with the potential to disrupt the established hierarchy, including driver-adjustable rear wings, the return of the Kers power-boost system and a change of tyre supplier.

A new world champion, the youngest ever, was anointed in Abu Dhabi in November. No one who has followed Sebastian Vettel since his arrival as a 19-year-old rookie at Indianapolis in 2007 would have been in the least surprised by his early success. Barely a year after his debut came his first victory, at Monza. He was driving a Toro Rosso, a decent car but not an authentic frontrunner, in the pouring rain. The young German's scintillating talent made the difference. Promoted to the Red Bull squad for the following season, he won four races. And the year after that came his first title, captured as the result of winning more races – five – and claiming more pole positions – 10 – than any of his rivals, just the way it should be.

Vettel is smart, funny, relaxed and likable in a way that delights broadcasters, sponsors and the public. He also has a temper, carefully hidden thus far, which may yet come to the surface when things go badly for a whole chunk of a season rather than for an hour or two, as one day they surely will.

Like Michael Schumacher, Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, Vettel was born to be a racing driver and, if anything can be guaranteed in an uncertain world and a perilous sport, it is that his 2010 world championship will not be his last. Schumacher and Alonso are already multiple title-winners; perhaps the most intriguing question in Formula One is which of Vettel and Hamilton, the 2008 champion, will be the first to win his second.

For Vettel, the best guarantee is the presence of Adrian Newey, the brilliant designer of grand prix-winning cars for Williams, McLaren and now Red Bull. Newey's cars tend to be not just race winners but the dominant forces of their time and last year's Renault-engined RB6 enjoyed a margin of superiority that was the despair of every other designer in the pit lane. The RB7, unveiled in Valencia last month, appears to be a logical refinement of its predecessor, and therefore likely to keep the smile on Vettel's face – and perhaps even that of his Australian team-mate, Mark Webber, who challenged hard for the title last year but may have difficulty coming so close again.

Like his rival designers, Newey has been concentrating his efforts on analysing the characteristics of the new tyres supplied by Pirelli. Returning to Formula One after an absence of 20 years, the Italian company has taken over from Bridgestone with a mandate to produce compounds that degrade more quickly. A counterintuitive approach for a tyre manufacturer, this is intended to make the racing more exciting and unpredictable, not least by increasing the need for regular pit stops – in part to compensate for the absence of the refuelling stops that were outlawed last year.

From pre-season tests the signs are that Pirelli have succeeded so well that the super-soft version of their P Zero tyre appears to be good for only one flat-out lap, just like the old qualifying rubber that the drivers used on Saturday afternoons. It remains to be seen how the manufacturer will respond if the tyres degrade badly enough to make them look incompetent, which would hardly be good for the sales of their road-car products.

For the teams at the top end of the grid, the tests have been largely devoted to assessing and attempting to minimise tyre wear. This year the car capable of the most impressive lap times in optimum conditions may not turn out to be the one best suited to winning races. So far the Red Bulls, without posting the fastest times, have been the most consistent in runs of between 15 and 20 laps, the approximate distance between race stops, experiencing less of the fall-off that may prove a serious hindrance to the efforts of their competitors.

Hot air is the other technical talking point of Formula One in 2011, or more precisely the routing of the air leaving the exhaust pipes to assist the creation of aerodynamic downforce in the absence of the double diffusers introduced in 2009 and of last year's F-ducts, both now banned. In its most extreme expression to date the exhaust of the Renault R31 comes out in front of the sidepods, the air being channelled underneath. Since Kubica, before his rallying accident, set the fastest time in the Valencia test, and Nick Heidfeld, his replacement, was third fastest in Jerez, it can be assumed to work. Other teams, whose ideas are less radical, will not be slow to copy.

For Fernando Alonso, who took the fight for the 2011 title all the way to Abu Dhabi before a strategic blunder ruined his chance, there is a new Ferrari that appears devoid of innovation. For all its glorious history the Scuderia Ferrari has seldom been noted for blazing new technical trails and the renamed Ferrari 150° Italia appears to represent an attempt to give the prince of Asturias the title in his second season with the team by doing the straightforward things well.

This time last year it was McLaren, with their ingenious F-duct, who appeared to have pulled the neatest performance-enhancing trick, only for their season to end in disappointment. Button and Hamilton will be hoping that the sleek new MP4-26 enables them to challenge for the title again, but the early test sessions have been interrupted by small mechanical problems. Some would say that getting gremlins out of the system is what testing is for, but so far there has been no sign of a great leap forward for the Mercedes-engined cars.

For Mercedes themselves, taking over the Brawn team last year and returning to Formula One under their own name after a 55-year break, there is the need to prove that Michael Schumacher's comeback in 2010 was not a dud. The Mercedes W01, originally designed for Button, did not suit the seven-times champion's driving style, although it started the season happily enough in the hands of the team's second driver, Nico Rosberg. But no one has a more intimate knowledge of Schumacher's requirements than Ross Brawn, the team principal, and every effort will have been made to ensure that the W02 offers a dividend on the company's huge investment in the superstar's return. Fernando Alonso has suggested that Schumacher was just playing himself in after a three-year hiatus and will be a major contender in 2011, but, if the younger of the Mercedes drivers again starts the season as the faster of the two, the situation in the Silver Arrows' garage could get interesting.

Beneath the five teams who, between them, have won every championship going back to 1998, and who (with the exception of Kubica at Renault) will field the same drivers as last year, lies a midfield dogfight that includes Williams, Force India, Toro Rosso and Sauber, whose Japanese driver, the 24-year-old Kamui Kobayashi, is already a favourite with those who like to see risks being taken on the track.

Here, too, are a pair of Latin American rookies, Pastor Maldonado at Williams and Sergio Pérez at Sauber, backed by money from Venezuela and Mexico respectively – just as Juan Manuel Fangio and José Froilan González received support from Argentina when they ventured to Europe in the late 1940s. Pérez's backer, the Lebanese-Mexican telecoms magnate Carlos Slim, is said to be the world's richest man, which will ensure his popularity in Formula One.

In the battle between last season's low-budget rookie teams Lotus, Malaysian-owned and Norfolk- based, emerged as the most likely to fight their way up the table. While Mike Gascoyne's new Renault-engined T128 had a sticky start to its testing programme, Virgin launched their MVR-02 with Russian backing, while the severely under-resourced HRT team used their old car until the arrival of the new F111, designed by the experienced Geoff Willis, but it failed to take part in a single test.

All this season's cars will have a movable flap in their rear-wing design, to be operated by the driver in a single designated 600-metre section of each track, its use permitted only when he has entered the preceding corner within a second of the car ahead. Like the Kers energy- recycling button, this is the latest brainwave to improve the spectacle, by giving drivers more opportunity to overtake, and to make the proceedings even harder for commentators to explain to the public. Like so much in a sport noted for its incomparable levels of technological sophistication, it is a shot in the dark.

Beyond the near certainty that Vettel and the Red Bull RB7 will be the combination to beat, predictions are hazardous – particularly the sort based on such one-off lap times as those put up in pre-season testing by Schumacher, Pérez and Rubens Barrichello's Williams-Cosworth, with its interesting new gearbox and rear-suspension system. In 2011, to a greater degree than for many years, success in Formula One is up for grabs.

Five champions

Michael Schumacher

1994, 95, 2000, 01, 02, 03, 04

How did he do it?

Clumsily. The 1994 season should never have ended up in a situation where everyone remembers Schumacher punting Damon Hill out of title contention at the last race in Adelaide.

Can he do it again?

Unlikely on the evidence of last season but Schumacher has defied the critics throughout his career.

Fernando Alonso 2005, 06

How did he do it?

Brought the curtain down on the Schumacher era with a dominant championship in 2005. Having made Renault into Team Alonso, he won again the following year.

Can he do it again?

Yes. After a three-year hiatus, when he couldn't tame Lewis Hamilton at McLaren and Renault were mid-grid, Alonso has finally got everything just so at Ferrari.

Lewis Hamilton 2008

How did he do it?

By leaving it to the last corner of the last lap of the last race. Really should have got it done sooner.

Can he do it again?

Many times. Hard to imagine him in anything other than a McLaren and they are almost always in the mix.

Jenson Button 2009

How did he do it?

Won six of the first seven races and then hung on. Ten years after being feted as the next big thing, he proved he was.

Can he do it again?

If he does, it will be this year. New rules and new tyres often require that speed of thought is as important as a heavy right foot and no one adapts better.

Sebastian Vettel 2010

How did he do it?

By being the fastest driver in the fastest car but still making enough errors to take the title fight down to the wire.

Can he do it again?

Definitely. Red Bull are Vettel's team and one suspects that last year's late show was just the start.