Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton rule the F1 roost despite Ferrari’s challenge last year. Is there anyone capable of knocking them off their perch this year?
MERCEDES
Mercedes was spared with hurriedly finding a replacement for a world champion during F1’s off-season this time around. They wrapped up their sixth and fourth drivers’ and constructors’ championships, respectively, last year and their testing form has been very ominous. The silver arrows kept their heads down and focused on getting the car sorted for racing conditions as much as possible while others grabbed headlines with session topping lap-times. How good the level of their rivals is this year will determine whether Lewis Hamilton faces a challenge from Valtteri Bottas or drivers from Ferrari or Red Bull.
FERRARI
Whatever you do, don’t mention the 2017 Singapore Grand Prix to Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen or anyone else from Ferrari for that matter. That race marked the starting point from which a crash in Singapore and technical failures in Malaysia and Japan effectively ended Vettel’s challenge to Hamilton. Reliability and avoiding damage has become even more important this year due to teams being restricted to using just three internal combustion engines, heat motor generator units and turbochargers over the course of all 21 races this year. And just two kinetic motor generator units, energy stores and control electronics.
RED BULL RACING-TAG HEUER
The team that dominated F1 from 2010 to 2013 is at a crossroads these days. Ever since the start of the turbo-hybrid power unit era in 2014, the team has been, literally, short on power and has had a less than ideal relationship with Renault, which got almost no credit for the team’s successes and pretty much all the blame when things went pear-shaped. Renault is doing what it can to get close to Mercedes and Ferrari, and Red Bull still has what’s probably the most exciting driver pairing in F1 with Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.
FORCE INDIA-MERCEDES
By the time you read this, the team may well have changed its name as its owner faces extradition charges to India. But the team itself is running as well as a moderately funded F1 operation can hope to. In Sergio Perez, it has one very solid driver who brings in many sponsors partnered with Esteban Ocon, a very talented youngster who has been placed there by Mercedes that has a strong technical partnership with the team. And it will get stronger this year as power unit parity rules have been placed in F1 that dictate that a power unit supplier has to provide its customer teams with the latest-spec power unit.
WILLIAMS-MERCEDES
They may be the third most successful team in F1 history, but they’ve not won a drivers’ or constructors’ title since 1997. Their last won race was in 2012, prior to which they had been winless since 2004. The team has effectively become a customer team for Mercedes, and even then, it is not the best of the bunch with Force India having leap-frogged it. They are no longer in a position to pick the best possible drivers, and their current line-up of Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin help pay the bills. As does title sponsor Martini but, they will not be around at the end of this year.
HAAS-FERRARI
Gene Haas’ F1 operations may have only started in 2016 but the American has been involved in motorsport including single-seat racing for much longer than that. Helped by his CNC automation business and a close working relationship with power unit supplier Ferrari, the team started 2016 with a bang as Romain Grosjean claimed a sixth and fifth place finish in the opening two rounds. The 29 points the team scored in 2016 was almost doubled to 47 last year but competitiveness in the midfield meant they remained in eighth place. An eye-catching lap on the final day of testing could be a sign of a big improvement or just showing off. Time will tell.
SAUBER-FERRARI
The team that was once used by BMW to have a factory team presence in F1 will now effectively become a junior team to the Ferrari outfit, much like how Toro Rosso is to Red Bull. This helps Ferrari in two ways. It allows it to bring the Alfa Romeo brand into F1 and use it to market the road cars, and it allows for their star protégé Charles Leclerc to get behind the wheel of an F1 car that has the latest specification Ferrari engine. Leclerc’s debut was only a matter of time given his impressive results in junior racing series. He will likely be tasked with driving one of the scarlet cars someday.
RENAULT
Since returning as a factory team in 2016 – egged on by strained relations with Red Bull – Renault has consistently been reinvesting in their F1 program that runs much like A Tale of Two Cities, minus the mass decapitations! In Enstone, United Kingdom and Viry Chatillon, France, the team’s chassis and engine operations have been working overtime to give Nico Hulkenberg and Carlos Sainz Jr. the best tool available to improve on the team’s sixth place last year. And they need whatever help they can get as midfield teams all are closely bunched together based on what we have seen in testing so far.
McLAREN-RENAULT
They may not have a works power unit supplier anymore but now McLaren has a brilliant chassis and an engine that works and that will allow Fernando Alonso to take the fight to Red Bull and shake things up. That may not be so, however. McLaren completed the fewest number of laps than any team, 599 laps of the 4.655km Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, which was almost 100 laps less than the team with the next lowest total, Haas-Ferrari. Without a title sponsor, the team has to fall back on the backing of its shareholders in order to fix the issues found in testing so that they can start gaining results that will attract a long-term sponsor.
SCUDERIA TORO ROSSO-HONDA
For the first time since 2006, Honda attracted the right kind of attention in an F1 setting during pre-season testing. While their engine may not have been pushed to the max by their new partners Toro Rosso, it appeared to be reliable and the team was able to get through its testing programs with barely any hitches. Behind Mercedes (1,040 laps) and Ferrari (929 laps), Toro Rosso completed the third highest number of laps (822) out of the ten teams over the eight days of pre-season testing. And now there is even talk of Honda eventually becoming a power unit supplier to the parent team (Red Bull).
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