F1 2016 season preview... Why it won’t just be about politics

F1 fumbles its way into the 2016 season in dire need of a rocket up the rear diffuser.

Politics, powers struggles and posturing are all part of the F1 circus but this year’s pre-season shenanigans – particularly the shambolic flip-flopping over new qualifying rules – have left many fans wondering who is looking after their interests, as opposed to the interests of the sport’s big beasts. (The answer, if you’re interested, is no one).

Drivers of the calibre of Hamilton (pictured above) and Alonso, and Webber and Button, have given the sport a kicking for being boring and badly run. Vettel has joined in too.

Still, we’re fans and we know 2016 will feature the good, the bad and the tyre management, so let’s break out the crystal ball.

Three F1 changes to look out for in 2016

That qualification quagmire:

The new system looks complicated but, in summary, there will still be three quali sessions, with slower drivers being eliminated one-by-one. The idea is to shake up the grid a bit, dropping faster drivers down the starting order if they make a mistake and allowing slower teams a chance to start nearer the front.

Think of it as asking drivers to roll a dice as well as set fast times if they want to progress to Q3.

No doubt there will be controversy as drivers claim they were blocked on a fast lap or teams get their tyre decisions wrong. But, let’s face it, that’s also been the case with the old quali system. Expect complaints from the fans about the final quali session in particular, with only eight cars taking part instead of ten and, crucially, there being only two cars left for the final 90-second ‘shoot-out’ thanks to the knock-out system.

On the basis that fast teams will still have an advantage – controversial, I know – how often will we see Hamilton and Rosberg trundling around for the last few seconds of Q3, having already used up their tyres keeping the Ferrari boys at bay? One thing is certain: the old quali system was popular and worked perfectly well, so this new approach better deliver the goods or F1 will be left with yet more egg on its face. And the race stewards better stay sharp…

Radio silence… relatively speaking:

This year’s restrictions on what the teams can tell drivers on track are particularly severe, in an attempt to make drivers play a bigger role and give strategists a lesser impact. In particular, constant feedback about engine settings, tyre wear and fuel consumption are no longer permitted.

The good news is that this increases the chances of errors, and of drivers adopting a more aggressive strategy than their team may consider prudent (we’re looking at you, Mercedes; we’re looking at you very hopefully). The bad news is there will be far fewer opportunities for those testy radio exchanges between those who know best on the pit wall and those who know best in the car.

The battle of the big cheeses:

F1 is as much about what happens off-track as on and 2016 is shaping up to be a season in which the balance of power swings further away from Bernie Ecclestone. Ecclestone (pictured above with CVC co-founder Donald Mackenzie… more on him later in the season, one suspects) has never been one to shy away from making headline-grabbing public statements – he knows how to play the media game as well as anyone – but in recent weeks he has dug several deep PR holes and then promptly jumped in headfirst.

In February, he said F1 was the worst it had ever been, and he wouldn’t buy tickets for his family. Days later, in his own inimitable style, Bernie told Reuters: ‘I wasn’t talking the sport down at all, quite the opposite.’ He then explained that he ‘seemed to be the only person that thought we should do something in Formula One, to wake everyone up a little bit’.

Then came the nonsense surrounding the new qualification procedures, with Ecclestone – lest we forget, the sport’s chief executive – warning that the software needed to run the new set-up wouldn’t be ready for the season’s first races. Next, two weeks before the opening grand prix in Melbourne, he told Forbes that the software was, in fact, going to be ready to help spice up the grid – but then added: ‘It’s good that we are going to do something even if we don’t like it.’ Huh?

But where will the power end up? The big manufacturers, Mercedes and Ferrari, already have a huge grip on the sport, and both Mercedes president Dieter Zetsche and former Ferrari president Luca di Montezemolo have suggested that it is time for the Ecclestone era to come to an end.

Jean Todt, president of the FIA, F1’s governing body, has hinted that he holds similar views; Ecclestone, for his part, has been critical of Todt’s ‘hands-off’ approach to F1.

Wherever the power eventually rests, don’t expect smaller teams, drivers or fans to get any more say in the sport.

Same-old, same-old: Three things that haven’t changed

Snowplough racing:

Aerodynamic performance still dominates F1 at both ends of the grid. Those huge front wings are engineering masterpieces, even if they do resemble cow-catchers on an old train, but they lose effectiveness massively when driving in the turbulent air behind another car. That makes it harder for the cars to go round corners and destroys overtaking opportunities. Of course, driving around the outside of the car in front is one way around this problem, as teenager Max Verstappen demonstrated several times last season, not least with his Belgian Grand Prix move on Felipe Nasr.

Tyred arguments:

Pirelli have made changes to their tyres for 2016, bringing back an improved version of ‘the cliff’ so that worn tyres lose a huge amount of grip rapidly (but ‘safely’). Tyre management will remain critical, particularly as radio communications with the pit are being limited, but tyre management is unpopular with a large number of fans – cars cornering more slowly, to reduce rubber wear, don’t look nearly as cool as cars being driven flat-out, and the drivers are not pushed anywhere close to their limits. Let the arguments commence. One other thing: teams had to choose their tyre mix before the new qualification rules were agreed … at least that means every team has one decent excuse from messing up in Melbourne.

The art of noise:

We were promised noisier cars in 2016, with trick exhausts to amplify the racket from those little 1.6litre power units. The testing at Barcelona suggested any increase is fairly modest, if you can spot it at all. Nico Hulkenberg reckoned there was no difference, McLaren racing director Eric Boullier hedged his bets, saying the noise is ‘a little bit better – isn’t it?’ and Red Bull chief engineering officer Rob Marshall said the new exhausts were a waste of time that had only made the car heavier. Opinion is divided among fans about the importance of noise in F1 but, if you want it to be louder, buy a new amplifier, bigger speakers and turn up the tv. Then watch re-runs of races from the last century.

Team-by-team

Mercedes: If the Terminator did F1

Merc completed a ridiculously huge number of laps (1,294, or 19 grands prix) in the pre-season tests at Barcelona before Hamilton finally hit a transmission problem. They weren’t fastest but, just like in last season’s tests, they didn’t appear to be trying – Hamilton and Rosberg didn’t even use the fastest tyre compound.

With Ferrari looking to have a promising package, Mercedes may have to run their cars more aggressively this season – if that’s the case, they’ll want to be certain the machinery is bullet-proof. The Barcelona tests suggest they’re bomb-proof.

As for the drivers, let’s hope that the radio communication restrictions free Hamilton and Rosberg to manage their engines more aggressively, keeping us entertained at the front of the field. Despite being champion, Hamilton needs to show that he can raise his game and regain focus after that end-of-season dip in 2015. And Rosberg is, simply, running out of time.

Prediction: Drivers’ and Constructors’ champions again, with in-team rivalry threatening a driver 1-2 as the season progresses, please.

Ferrari: The bridesmaids wore red

Ferrari fans were cheered by the new car’s pace in Barcelona, with Raikkonen and Vettel nailing the fastest laps, albeit on softer tyres than Mercedes. Trouble is, few people believe we’ve seen the true pace of Mercedes and the expectation is that Ferrari will keep Mercedes honest – but be trailing behind like Maranello caravans too often for the Tifosi’s liking. And, while their engine is promising, reliability is going to have to be epic to mount a real title challenge.

Vettel is looking racy and could finish in the top two, if fortune smiles on him. Raikkonen will continue to be awesome in his own, special ways.

Prediction: Better than last year, podium regulars and possibly second place in both championships, with a bit of luck and a lot of reliability. Vettel’s ‘winning finger’ should appear and Raikkonen will be delighted that the new radio restrictions have shut his team up during races.

Williams: Buddy, can you spare a dime?

They may have finished third in 2015 despite being the least wealthy of the front-runners but Williams’ lack of budget – less than half of Red Bull, Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari – will make it hard to maintain that position. The Grove-based team are notoriously hard to read on the basis of test days but both drivers were encouraged by an increase in grip levels, particularly at lower speeds, which was a problem area last year. Their Mercedes engine is a huge bonus, if they can get the software right, but they’ll need to capitalise on it early in the season, in case Red Bull and their Renault power unit start to make progress.

Drivers Massa and Bottas can be expected to put in another solid performance – though it’s unlikely that Ferrari will be sniffing around Bottas like they were in the early part of last season.

Prediction: Battling for third place in the Constructors’ championship but their success will depend heavily on how much joy teams such as Red Bull and Toro Rosso have with their power units.

Red Bull: Stamp, snort, bellow, see last year

Nice chassis, great parties, sense of entitlement somewhat battered. Red Bull did well to finish fourth last season, handicapped badly by their wheezing, tricky to drive Renault engine. And so, after months of brinksmanship and mud-slinging, of course they’re back with another Renault engine (disguised with watchmaker TAG-Heuer’s branding, and spawning many predictable headlines on a clockwork theme), one which is an improvement on last year’s effort but isn’t expected to start delivering the goods until later in the season.

Diplomatic foibles notwithstanding, Red Bull remain a force to be reckoned with, and it’s well within their capability to challenge for a top-three position, if Renault bring a little to the party.

Both Ricciardo (pictured above) and Kvyat showed last season that they could wrestle their way on to the podium, given a following wind, and it will be good news for spectators if they get a 2016 package that allows them to mix it up with the front-runners a little more often.

Prediction: The first part of the 2016 campaign isn’t expected to be stellar but, if Renault get their act together by mid-season, the Bully boys could be challenging for third place in the Constructors’ Championship. If Renault continue to struggle, then take your seats for another show of RB hissy fits. And, if you really want Red Bull to suffer, keep your fingers crossed that their junior sister team Toro Rosso do the business with their 2015-spec Ferrari engine. Ouch, just imagine.

Force India: Don’t you forget about me

With even less cash to play with than Williams, Force India have still managed a steady journey up the table since arriving on the scene just 150 races ago. Although their team family tree can be traced back to Jordan, Force India actually took over what had been the Midland and then Spyker teams for the 2008 season and, if not a rags-to-riches story, their progress has still been remarkable. Last year’s B-spec VJM08 car, introduced midway through the championship, really delivered the goods and ended the season with a qualifying time not a million miles from Ferrari. So the team knows what it’s doing, though the cloud hanging over co-owner Vijay Mallya is a worrying distraction.

And testing of this year’s car suggests it is nimble, and could certainly challenge Williams on slower circuits; we still don’t know enough about the Williams car to guess who’ll have the upper hand on faster circuits.

As for Force India’s drivers… last season was a reality check for Hulkenberg and, particularly when the B-spec car arrived, Perez shone. The Hulk is popular and, last year aside, fast, but he rips through tyres like his namesake rips through shirts. He needs a solid start to the season to build some confidence and get back to his crowd-pleasing ways. Checo, on the other hand, has tended to divide opinion but he has a remarkable touch with his tyres and he’s reliable on a Saturday too.

Prediction: It’s too much to expect Force India to better last year’s fifth in the Constructors’ Championship but they will be there or thereabouts. Their Merc power will let them mix it with Red Bull as well as Williams and they could throw up a surprise or two at the twistier circuits. But let’s hope Mallya’s issues don’t end up being the Force India headlines this year.

Renault: Sacré bleu! Over there! It’s 2017!

This season is all about rebuilding the beaten-up old Lotus/Enstone team and whipping the engine into shape. Of course, it won’t be enough for Renault to keep pointing to next year but, in reality, that’s what this season is all about – stabilising the team and getting the power unit to perform to an acceptable standard, particularly at lower revs.

Renault haven’t spent big on their drivers – Jolyon Palmer helpfully brings several million with him, reportedly, and it took him a few seasons to win the GP2 title in 2014, but that title means he has earned his place in F1.

As for Kevin Magnussen, oh how we cheered (also in 2014) when he piloted a McLaren to second place on his F1 debut; I received a text from one bemused friend, struggling to accept that his new favourite driver was called Kevin. And then… well, there were good points and bad points.

Both drivers spent last season in the F1 background, relatively speaking, and this season they will have to up their game – their ability to help Renault develop their race package will be as important as their outright speed but, of course, they both have a lot to prove.

Prediction: The French will be exporting most of their champagne, but will allow themselves the odd tipple as they start to grind out results. A huge target for them is out-performing Renault-powered Red Bull – doesn’t seem like such an easy job, does it?

Toro Rosso: Taking the Bull by the horns

And so one of last year’s surprise packages dumps its weakest link – that Renault lump – and switches to Ferrari power, albeit last year’s Ferrari engine. It’s a cracking chassis, and the expectation is that Toro Rosso will outperform big brother Red Bull in the early part of the season at least. However, because Toro Rosso were (quietly) part of last year’s Red Bull-Renault argument, they didn’t get their engine deal confirmed until November – and that was way too late to do a proper job of teaming up the chassis and engine.

So, on the downside, they may not be as quick as they could be in the early part of the season; on the upside, they may well find substantial improvements as the season progresses. In short, if they start the season ahead of Red Bull, don’t assume it’s a foregone conclusion that Red Bull will overshadow them later in the year.

And about their drivers… you’d hire them, wouldn’t you. Verstappen, all 17 years and 166 days of him, debuted at last year’s Oz Grand Prix, with a career that consisted largely of karts and a solitary season of Formula Three, in which he finished third. His overtaking was, at times, jaw-dropping; his opening practice laps at Monaco beggared belief (he was second-fastest, having previously driven the circuit precisely never); his mistakes were rookie F1 mistakes, but not the mistakes that so many expected of a 17-year-old who accidentally finds himself driving with the best. He’s good.

Then there’s Sainz. He got a drive only because of the knock-on effects of Vettel exiting Red Bull. Then he found himself in the shadow of a schoolboy team-mate (Sainz is only three years older than Verstappen). And he finished the season a long way behind Verstappen (18 points to 49). But he also drove extremely well, worked with his mechanics extremely well, handled the media extremely well – and had all sorts of bad luck, not all of it his own making. Don’t discount him.

Prediction: This will be a good year to be a Toro Rosso sponsor, because they’re going to be talked about. Talked about because of their engine, talked about because of their performance relative to Red Bull, talked about because their drivers can light up a circuit. Heck, if the 2015 Ferrari engine turns out to be a more reliable bet than the 2016 model, who knows what could happen? They’ll certainly improve on their seventh place in last year’s Constructors’ race.

Sauber: Looks like I picked the wrong season to quit sniffing glue (with apologies to Airplane!)

They’re a plucky lot at Sauber, and they need to be. No points – none – in 2014, financial wrangles in 2015 and a very public battle with Giedo van der Garde over their driver policy. Yet they did score points last season, helped by a decent enough chassis and Ferrari power. But, as the year progressed, Sauber’s inability to spend on innovation crippled it. Perhaps Sauber is the shining example of how the financial set-up of F1 is potentially lethal to smaller teams, struggling to stay afloat while the big boys spend lavishly on upgrades.

This season they didn’t attend the first pre-season test, ominously, though their car wasn’t without fans when it finally did make an appearance.

Starting their testing late, with a horribly restricted budget for improvements, it’s hard not to feel sorry for the Swiss outfit; F1 needs smaller teams but it’s a hellish environment in which to run a little operation.

In Ericsson and Nasr, Sauber have drivers who can bring sponsorship bucks to the team; that’s how it is when you’re battling to survive. Both are capable drivers but Ericsson struggled for much of last season, although he found some form in the second half, despite being hard on the sensitive Pirellis. Nasr started his F1 career with an impressive fifth place, showcasing a smooth, mature approach that was kind to the car and delivered results. But his season fell away, though at least partly because of decisions outwith his control.

Prediction: Sauber will be happy to get on the scoreboard early but they’ll have to work some magic to avoid dropping further than last season’s eighth place in the Constructors’ battle.

McLaren: Aspiring to mediocrity

McLaren’s miseries have given plenty of F1 fans cause to chuckle but their ongoing embarrassment has been bad for the sport; we need big teams like this to be challenging, irritating, surprising and occasionally even beating whoever happens to be dominating. We don’t need them trailing around at the back of the grid, with two world champions as pilots, picking up crazy penalties because nothing they do seems to work.

So, this year, an improvement is anticipated – the 2016 chassis is attracting praise, there’s hope that Honda has squeezed a bit more performance from the engine and neither of the McLaren drivers has retired. Yet.

The Barcelona tests suggested that… the Honda unit is much more reliable, the chassis is good but that McLaren are still likely to struggle to make an impact on the midfield. Speed trap times suggest there’s a 20km/h gap to Mercedes and, as for the bhp gap, pick a number between 50 and 100. The ball is definitely in Honda’s court on that front.

Worryingly, though, there have been post-Barcelona rumblings about the aero and chassis set-up still being behind where the team want it … watch this space.

If the car has any potential, Alonso is the man to get the max out of the McLaren package. Then again, if he likes how it drives, we know Button is imperious; but he hasn’t sounded particularly happy after testing. It’s a blessing both these men have championships to their names because, if the McLaren horror story continues, we may not have them in the sport for much longer.

Prediction: Unless there’s a huge turnaround at Honda, McLaren will be relieved, if not happy, to scrape a few points at each race. Still, they’re likely to finish ahead of Sauber, which is at least an improvement on 2015. How the mighty fall. Sadly, it looks quite possible that Button and also Alonso, who has complained about F1 being too slow, may end their careers without ever winning another race.

Manor: To the Manor reborn

This is a team that, as Marussia, were staring into the abyss in 2014 but survived, patched themselves up then spent last year trundling around doing whatever it took to avoid scoring points. To be fair, once it became apparent that they were qualifying within the 107% rule, they junked any plans to improve last season’s jalopy and focussed on this year’s car.

That is now looking like a smart move. They’ve switched to Mercedes power, have a technical partnership with Williams and have been beefing up their depleted team with some experienced hands.

The new car is seconds a lap faster than the old and looked ok during testing. No one is expecting miracles but the team are hoping for a respectable level of performance this year.

The Manor drivers come from contrasting backgrounds. Pascal Wehrlein arrives via Mercedes, who retain rights over this young star. He won the DTM series last year, at 21 the youngest champion DTM has had; and he did it in a car that was not particularly fast, failing to claim any poles all season. Wehrlein has shown great consistency and could help Manor surprise the other tail-end teams.

Rio Haryanto brings money from Indonesia’s state oil operator and finished fourth in GP2 last year – his fourth year in the series. A spin or two in testing had the naysayers anointing him the new Maldonado, until recently F1’s bogeyman of choice, but we’ll see.

Prediction: Reliability and consistency could bring Manor the odd point; certainly they’ll perform well ahead of their 2015 level, and watch out for Wehrlein (pictured above), particularly with that Mercedes power under his right foot.

Haas: Didn’t you Americans read the script?

F1’s newbies have arrived and show no signs of starting from the bottom. Barcelona testing suggested this US outfit could slot straight into the midfield. Sure, the car was a tad twitchy and team boss Gene Hass was very candid about how much he has to learn about F1, but this was an extremely encouraging debut.

Haas has been involved in NASCAR since 2002 and his experience will be invaluable as his F1 team find their feet.

Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez both bring F1 experience to the team – Gutierrez raced for Sauber and was Ferrari’s reserve driver last year, while Grosjean had an eventful four years at Lotus before moving to Haas.

Prediction: They’ve already surprised us and they’ll keep getting better as the team starts to gel. Remember that Ferrari are supplying lots of parts, including the engines, gearboxes and suspension, and don’t be surprised when the newbies start to score points.