Will the new qualy format be abandoned after Saturday, can Lewis end Nico's run, will the midfield order finally become clear, and...
Monday 4 April 2016 14:42, UK
One more run before elimination for qualifying?
Despite F1's return, a competitive field and an enthralling race - the Australian GP will most likely be remembered for a disastrous Saturday when teams, drivers and pundits were united in their criticism of a new qualifying format. The only relief for confused fans was that it would surely be gone before the next race.
But here we are again and the new elimination format is still with us. Will Bahrain, like Australia, see more cars in the pits at critical moments and drivers standing on weighing scales before their pole position is confirmed?
"We haven't found the right format with this change," said Mercedes' Toto Wolff. "It's hard to see how it might be more entertaining for the fans this weekend in Bahrain."
Why hasn't qualifying changed?
It's difficult to find a reason to disagree with the Austrian. Teams may arrive in the desert with more tactics on how to avoid an early elimination and a better plan to beat the clock when it matters most - but the underlying concern is that there simply won't be enough action in the later stages of qualifying.
A compromise was almost agreed and it seems inevitable that, without a shocking shift in excitement, the new-for-2016 system will be scrapped after Bahrain.
Who knows, maybe it will look better under the lights. Maybe we'll see a Mercedes or a Ferrari spin out and get timed out in Q1.
One thing's for sure - it can't get much worse.
Strategic thinking for Mercedes and Ferrari
One irony of F1 2016's opening 'weekend of two halves' in Melbourne was that the new tyre rules which many had feared would confuse and underwhelm fans actually proved rather more straightforward to follow than the convoluted qualifying system which, on paper, had seemed a refinement of the old format.
Although it remains unwise to point an F1 layman in the direction of the complex wording for the three-compound tyre rules, the first results of the change were certainly positive - and there's every reason to believe the Sunday spectacle will benefit again in round two.
Mercedes and Ferrari's respective selections for Australia hardly differed, yet the Scuderia's decision to hold back a set of supersofts for race day could have proved an ace call had the red flag not part-neutralised their strategy.
For Bahrain, there's a more noticeable split in strategy from the get-go with Mercedes selecting more of Pirelli's quicker tyres: both teams will have six sets of the fastest tyres on offer, the supersofts, but the world champions have prioritised the softs over the mediums with six sets per car to Ferrari's four. The Scuderia then have three sets of the medium tyres and Mercedes just one.
Both teams only needed one set of the mediums available for last year's race, completing one stint on the white-marked compound apiece with two on the softs. Where they did differ was in the order they completed their stints. While Mercedes opted for soft-soft-medium, Ferrari went with soft-medium-soft - a tactic which allowed an on-form Kimi Raikkonen to chase down the Silver Arrows in the final stint and pounce on Nico Rosberg when he ran into braking problems.
In the cooler conditions of the evening, the supersoft tyre may not be seen after the first stint - but what are Mercedes planning with their stockpile of softs? Two-stopper, or three, they look well placed.
Time for Lewis to banish his Sunday blues
Lewis Hamilton isn't usually a good loser. He's even less likely to be gracious when it comes to losing to Nico Rosberg. However, the world champion we saw in the Australian GP was a driver delighted with a second-placed finish.
While his reaction may have been justified after falling as low as seventh, the fact that Hamilton was faster than his team-mate all weekend yet still came away with less points will have eaten away at him during the two-week break. Ever the opportunist, Rosberg didn't have to overtake a single car on track to extended his winning run to four races.
Hamilton may argue that a one-two finish was great for Mercedes, but failure to end a certain streak at a circuit where he has won the last two events and we could start to see an entirely different public persona from Lewis.
As Jenson Button told Sky F1's Damon Hill in Melbourne: "If he doesn't think about it (Rosberg's form), it won't worry Lewis. But if he's asked about it, of course it's going to affect you."
Hamilton sounds confident ahead of the weekend, insists he's delighted with his pace and excited for some closer racing. But the questions regarding his and Rosberg's contrasting form will ramp up if the German claims victory in Bahrain.
Order, order! How will the midfield shake out?
A tight knot after the cloaks and daggers of pre-season, the pecking order still has plenty of unravelling to do even after the first race of the season.
While Ferrari and Mercedes appear a step ahead of the rest, and the only absolute certainty at the back is that Manor are on the bottom rung, all the other places in the pecking order remain in a state of flux.
After Max Verstappen qualified fifth in Australia, Toro Rosso have a sound claim to be regarded as the best of the rest behind Mercedes and Ferrari. But there will be no further development on their year-old Ferrari engine and both Williams - waiting on a new front-wing - and Red Bull, for whom Daniel Ricciardo was fourth on race day itself, sound confident about overtaking Toro Rosso sooner rather than later.
And then there's the packed midfield slightly further adrift to consider, starting with the complex ambiguity about where precisely McLaren stand after they failed to show during last Sunday's race. But that was mainly because of Fernando Alonso's brush with mortality and daft strategy calls for Jenson Button's car. In qualifying, they were just 1.5 seconds behind Mercedes while Alonso was within two tenths of both Williams and Force India. Can they - and more pertinently, Honda - maintain that sort of threat to the upper-midfield runners around a power circuit like Bahrain?
Renault, meanwhile, found similar cause for encouragement in the Melbourne small print. "If someone told me we would fight in the race with a Force India and a Williams I would have laughed," said team boss Fred Vasseur. And the joyous optimism didn't end there. Think that Esteban Gutierrez left Australia with only a wrecked car and a Q1 elimination to show for his efforts? Think again. 'In the elimination-style qualifying format that debuted on Saturday, Gutiérrez was putting down a lap that would've placed him seventh in Q1, more than enough to vault him into Q2 before time ran out,' stated the team. In other words, Haas believe - even without the endorsement of Romain Grosjean's sixth-place finish - they could be midfield runners too.
So just to recap: Toro Rosso are currently third quickest, but Red Bull and Williams both think they could be as well by the end of the season, Force India are there or thereabouts, McLaren might be too, Renault think they could be, and Haas are convinced they are looking good too.
Alas, they can't all be right. For someone, Bahrain is likely to prove a rude awakening.
Will the radio clampdown survive a second test?
But for the youthful - and slightly petulant - exuberance of youth turning the airwaves blue in Australia as Max Verstappen let rip at his Toro Rosso team, the sound of silence would have pervaded across the Australian GP following the FIA's clampdown on team-to-driver communications. Even after the restrictions were eased an hour or so before the season opener, the teams opted to remain silent in dutiful respect of the crackdown, making a grand total of 87 radio messages between them across the two hours of running.
"I hope we haven't gone too far on the radio stuff, because that's taking away an element of dialogue between the engineer and the driver," said Red Bull boss Christian Horner. "Some of that from behind the scenes can be quite entertaining, some of it X-rated, but quite enthralling for the fans. We got quite a few changes to take on board this year, so let's see how it goes."
While Lewis Hamilton's unanswered plea to his Mercedes team to be told how to "turn off the alarm" - who knew that F1 cars were fitted with car alarms? - was one of the race's more surreal moments, the effects of the new crackdown were more keenly felt at Toro Rosso following Verstappen's unilateral decision to pit - an error which cost the teenager a couple of places. It could have have also resulted in the retirement of race leader Nico Rosberg as the brake temperatures on his Mercedes reached critical levels.
In F1, rule bending is a matter of routine. After playing nicely in Melbourne, it would be a considerable surprise if one of the teams didn't find out how far the clampdown can be pushed in Bahrain.
