The new season will begin with new team principals at two of the major teams. Aston Martin and Otmar Szafnauer have parted, as have Alpine and Marcin Budkowski. In both cases such big changes come at a crucial time of opportunity and peril as the new technical regulations effectively wipe the competitive slate clean, cancelling out the cumulative knowledge advantage established by Mercedes and Red Bull. Getting it wrong at this point could take years of catching up to correct. Get it right and a team could be on a path which will pay back for a long time to come.