Will Mercedes prove an even classier class apart?
Let’s start at the top, or at least the front, and the question of just how large Mercedes’ advantage will be at the start of the 2015 season. There is universal acceptance in the paddock that the Silver Arrows will start the new season ahead of the pack, very possibly with a larger performance advantage over the field than at the end of a 2014 campaign in which they recorded a record-breaking 12 one-two finishes. ‘Ominous’ doesn’t even come close.
Scotch any talk of the W06 being a conservative successor to the all-conquering W05. Instantly reliable and faster than any other 2015 car despite not bolting on the supersofts at any point during testing, the best have just got better. And further ahead.
Mercedes may have talked up the improvement delivered by Ferrari and Williams over the winter, but Nico Rosberg’s reference to preparing for ‘The Rematch’ against Lewis Hamilton in the team’s own pre-Australia press release was a telling indication of what sort of season Mercedes believe awaits. Only modesty may forbid the Silver Arrows thrashing the field in Melbourne by upwards of 30 seconds.
PG
McLaren-Honda: Tough times pre-season but...
In a build-up to the new season that’s been as predictable as the weather, the only real, genuine question mark surrounds McLaren. What might they achieve in Melbourne?
If they pull something out of the bag, it would probably be the story of the Australian GP. Mercedes are sure to be out front, and although the Williams/Ferrari/Red Bull shakedown will be interesting to watch, it would be nothing compared to McLaren getting in amongst it.
Winter testing, when the team's new car was chronically unreliable and about three seconds slower than Mercedes, doesn’t auger well. But if McLaren do suddenly deceive to flatter then it certainly wouldn’t be the first time a team – least of all this team - have turned it around.
Just last year Red Bull’s car was conking out in the pitlane at the final test and their chances of completing 58 laps of Albert Park appeared slim. Even so, a few wise old sages suspected that memories of the world champions’ gruelling winter might soon fade.
And so it proved: Ricciardo put the car on the front row and finished second in the race. Yes, he was then disqualified for a fuel flow infringement but he’d gone the distance. A fortnight later, Sebastian Vettel stood on the podium at Sepang. They clearly weren’t they champions they had been but compared to how things were just a few weeks earlier, it could have been a damn sight worse.
It almost goes without saying that McLaren have previous in this regard. A byword for slow starts they might have become in recent years, yet even by their standards winter 2011 was a shocker. That was when exhaust blown diffusers were the thing and after trying to fathom their own trying-too-hard-to-be-clever design, a late decision was taken to knock up something simpler.
Fast forward to Melbourne and from pootling around for a few laps here and there, Lewis Hamilton and Jenson Button were suddenly among the Bulls. So it can happen; the question surrounds the magnitude of their problems. Fabricating a new exhaust is one thing; learning how to unleash the potential of a complex V6 hybrid turbo sounds like something else altogether.
The biggest problems McLaren-Honda have faced – breaking seals on the MGU-K – hardly sound fundamental. And by the sounds of it, they’ve also been running at rather less than full power in order to get mileage. By turning the wick up this weekend, might they confound expectations?
At least they had advance notice that this winter would be difficult. But in general, previous winters have shown that analysis of pre-season testing only goes so far; quite a way, admittedly, but there’s always a place for sudden inspiration, not to mention luck and fate; the random stuff.
And irony too: by far Magnussen’s best race last year was his debut, where he finished on the podium and beat Button, the driver McLaren-Honda chose over him to partner Fernando Alonso. Now there’s a young man with a point to prove.
MW
How tight will it be behind Mercedes?
Last year the pecking order behind Mercedes was immediately clear with Williams having the second quickest car, even if their conservative strategy did occasionally let them down, ahead of Red Bull with Ferrari fourth quickest – at least in the hands of Fernando Alonso.
After pre-season testing the fight for second looks to be much closer, with less than half a second separating all four Williams and Ferrari cars in Barcelona. Over a single lap Red Bull appear to have slipped back, but how much of their true pace they showed during testing remains to be seen, given the team even used camouflage to hide the secrets of the RB11.
Certainly the SF15-T appears to be the best car Ferrari have produced for many a year and both Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen made positive noises during testing. Should Mercedes hit strife during a race, a smart bet would be on the prancing horse galloping into the lead.
Those appear to be the only teams with a chance of fighting it out for a podium spot, with Toro Rosso in no-man’s land ahead of Force India and Sauber and McLaren looking unlikely to even make the chequered flag.
The Honda-powered MP4-30 seems like a fundamentally good car when on track – the problem was it wasn’t on track anywhere near enough during pre-season. With Honda just 18 months into a development programme Mercedes are now four years into, don’t expect to see McLaren picking up silverware in Melbourne.
WE
Re-born Manor’s 107% challenge
So, five months after the team appeared to have turned their final wheel, Marussia are back. Or, to be more precise, make that Manor Marussia – the team’s comeback coinciding with the return of the original name with which the outfit gained its original F1 entry back in 2009.
If describing Manor’s presence in Melbourne as a ‘fairytale’ would perhaps be pushing the bounds of sporting romanticism, the nature of their 11th-hour revival has certainly been impressive given the hurdles they have had to overcome. Four months in administration after their Russian backers pulled out in the wake of the country’s inaugural F1 race had left the team without their Banbury factory (bought by Haas), a workforce which had been made redundant, big debts to creditors including Ferrari and McLaren, and no more than a genesis of a 2015 car. Hopes of a return seemed hopeless.
But the arrival of a white knight in the form of of energy boss Stephen Fitzpatrick means that against all the odds Manor are on the grid in Melbourne. Of course, plenty of challenges remain, starting with this very weekend. As not only will the team start P1 on Friday with no winter testing mileage behind them to speak of, they’re almost certain to be even further off the pace than they were last season due to the fact they’re only running a modified version of the 2014 chassis with last year’s Ferrari engine in the back of it.
The story of pre-season testing suggests that the rest of the grid has improved by at least two seconds, raising suggestions that Manor’s drivers could fall foul of the 107 per cent rule in qualifying. Fitzpatrick, however, reckons Pirelli’s winter tyre improvements account for much of those gains: “We understand that some of this performance is made up from the new tyre compounds that Pirelli are bringing, which we will be using as well,” he said. “We’re going to understand much more about this the first time we run. I don’t think we’re particularly concerned about the 107 per cent rule for qualifying when we look at the combination of the tracks and also the performance that we were getting to at the end of last season.”
Nonetheless, while Manor may have won one challenge by simply getting to Melbourne, plenty remain ahead as they aim to rediscover the momentum of 2014 sooner rather than later.
JG