LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, START YOUR ENGINES ...
WHO’S NEW:
18-year-old Lance Stoll of Canada joins Williams after winning last season’s Formula 3 championship. McLaren’s 24-year-old Stoffel Vandoorne of Belgium and Frenchman Esteban Ocon (20-years-old), racing for Force India, will make their first full season starts, having made their debuts last season at the Baharain GP and Belgium GP, respectively. Then there is the major management shift from Bernie Ecclestone, in charge of the sport for 40 years, to Liberty Media. The new owners have promised all types of new innovations, from a social-media revolution to non-championship races that will fill in as testing for the smaller teams. THE OLD GUARD:
With Germany’s Nico Rosberg’s retirement at the end of last season, the world championship has been left vacant. That leaves Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes, the Ferrari duo of Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso, racing for McLaren, as the only drivers to have won the world championship, on the grid. ON THE CIRCUITS:
We are in for a 20-race calendar this season, with the revelation that there will be no German Grand Prix after neither Nuremberg or Hockenheim were able to agree commercial terms with F1 management. The European Grand Prix has also been dropped, and the Baku event that hosted it by name last season, has changed to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Melbourne will once again start the season with the Australian Grand Prix, which was won by eventual world champion Rosberg last year. Due to the changes in the rules and regulations, it is expected that the lap times here, and indeed for the remainder of this year, could be up to five seconds faster than what was seen in 2016. SO, CAN ANYONE CHALLENGE MERCEDES?
In short, probably not. Ferrari once again showed improvement in pre-season testing and could challenge here and there for a podium. Raikkonen posted the fastest time in those sessions, followed by teammate Sebastian Vettel. They were followed by Mercedes’ Valterri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton. If you were hoping for a McLaren resurgence, forget about it. They had major reliability issues during testing – they managed only 425 laps compared to Mercedes’ 2681 laps at the Catalunya circuit – and their Honda-powered engines were down on power and output, too, much to the frustration of Alonso. Williams, Red Bull, Toro Rosso, Renault and Force India should also be in the mix, and at least compete in the top 10. They could, with the talent like Sergio Perez (Force India) and Max Verstappen (Red Bull) and the wiliness of Felipe Massa (Williams), push for a podium finish on the rare occasion.