A NEW FORMULA
IT IS all change in Formula One this year as the season-opening Australian Grand Prix drew to a close this morning.
The cars are different — faster, better-looking and much more demanding. There are new driver line-ups — and new drivers.
The sport has new owners, with big plans for the future. And it looks like Mercedes might not find things as easy as they have in recent years. A Ferrari revival at last Ferrari look like they might just have designed a properly competitive car. Not before time, it should be said — it would be the first in nine years.
The SF17 not only features obvious innovations after years of Ferrari being behind the curve in Formula One design, but in testing it has been going like stink.
It is not the first time that a Ferrari has looked quick in pre-season. Usually, they have then fallen away when the competition proper started. But this year, it appears to be different.
No matter who you talk to, or how you do the numbers, the Ferrari looks genuinely quick. So much so that Lewis Hamilton said they were “possibly the favourites”.
Melbourne and the rest of the season may yet prove it not to be, but right now it looks like it is. And if Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen are genuinely in contention, it will be something to see.
At the same time, Vettel’s contract runs out this year. Will he sign another? Or might he be tempted away by Mercedes? Stability has rarely been a Maranello strong point. Can Bottas get near Hamilton? Hamilton has a new teammate this year after Nico Rosberg decided to retire following his title win in 2016.
The new man set the task of competing with the fastest driver in the world is Finland’s Valtteri Bottas.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff prised the 27-year-old out of Williams because he saw him as the closest he could get to a like-for-like replacement for Rosberg. That means someone quick enough to keep Hamilton on his toes, and a team player who will not rock the boat.
But three years alongside Felipe Massa at Williams have proved little about Bottas’ ultimate ability to compete at the very top of Formula One.
Bottas comfortably beat the Brazilian — but his superiority over Massa was nowhere near as great as was Fernando Alonso’s when they were teammates at Ferrari. Which doesn’t necessarily tell you anything, but might. So will Bottas be another Rosberg — quick and dependable, talented enough to run Hamilton close, but only good enough to beat him occasionally? The Red Bullfight As much as Red Bull want to have the fastest car this season, it would bring their two super-talented drivers head to head — and not in a good way . . .
Daniel Ricciardo versus Max Verstappen was already a compelling watch last season, and it is only likely to get better this year.
There is more hype around Verstappen, 19, than any young driver since Hamilton. And by and large he has lived up to it. A maiden win in his debut race for Red Bull last May was spectacular — even if he was helped by the team inadvertently strategising Ricciardo out of the way.
But even that paled into insignificance compared with his stunning drive in the wet in Brazil, a performance that drew legitimate comparisons with Ayrton Senna.
The fly in the Verstappen ointment, though, was that over the season Ricciardo was the more impressive performer. He out-qualified Verstappen more often than not, and he outscored him comfortably, too. In fact, Ricciardo was arguably the best driver on the grid last year.
Ricciardo is a potential champion in his own right, but if Verstappen is to live up to expectations, he will have to start establishing himself as the faster and better driver. Oh Honda. What now? If they repeat the form showed in preseason testing, McLaren-Honda will be struggling to get off the back of the grid in Australia today.
That’s with one of the cars being driven by Alonso, one of the greatest Formula One drivers of all time; and the other by a novice who shows every promise of being a star himself, Belgian Stoffel Vandoorne.
The McLaren chassis does not appear to be anything special — although it is hard to tell, because the fundamental reason for this is the catastrophic performance of Honda’s redesigned engine. How will the sport change? Liberty Media chairman Chase Carey comes in to run Formula One at a time when it is bringing back some of the historic features which made it great — such as fatter tyres, fierce cars . . . and moustaches.
One of the big questions heading into 2017 is how the new cars work, both in terms of challenging the drivers and improving the spectacle, and how the races might change.
Hot on its heels is when Liberty will start to make changes and what they will be. Beyond that, the shape of the calendar will change sooner or later. Liberty is keen to establish new races in the Americas — north and south — and Asia.
While all this is going on, Liberty has to begin negotiations with the teams over new contracts — all but one of them is committed to Formula One only as far as 2020. — bbc.com