Now all three pre-season test sessions have been completed and the cars will be shipped to Australia. The season-opener will take place in only a fortnight! What to expect from the very first race of the season? Here are my thoughts on the current pecking order of the teams.
In the very first test session at Jerez the most eye-catching feature in the new 1.6 litre turbo charged cars was the nose of the car. With the new regulations the teams had come up with a variety of solutions in terms of the nose. Lotus´s E22 with the twin prong nose was one of the most interesting designs. The nose of the F14T was described as "a vacuum cleaner" and the new Mercedes seemed to have "two enormous nostrils" on the nose. If I´m asked the new Caterham has the most hidious nose of them all!
But when the testing got underway the attention was quickly drawn from the noses to reliability issues. Within the first test days it became obvious that there were huge differences between the power units. Mercedes-powered cars proved most reliable and had least technical worries. Mercedes was the team with most mileage during the winter tests: almost 4973 kilometres. In terms of pace the Mercedes-powered cars looked strongest as well. One of the dark horses of the season might well be Williams, which had made a fortunate and genious decision to switch from Renault engines to Mercedes at the end of the previous season. Both Bottas and Massa have completed several race simulations and their pace has been on the very top.
Ferrari remains a bit of a question mark after the tests. They´ve suffered from some technical worries during all test sessions but both Alonso and Kimi seem pretty confident in terms of their performance. They certainly have work to do before the lights go out in Australia but their worries are minor if compared to the Renault-powered teams, which have all struggled heavily during the winter tests. Teams with Renault power unit have completed least mileage during the tests: significantly less than the leading Mercedes-powered teams! The quadruple world champion team Red Bull have had a catastrophic winter in many ways. On the third day of the second test session at Bahrain the reigning world champion Sebastian Vettel was only able to complete 4 corners during the entire test day! Many points the finger at the power unit supplier Renault but Red Bull definitely has to take some of the blame. Other Renault-powered teams Caterham, Toro Rosso and Lotus have struggled as well but Caterham for example have completed double the mileage compared to Red Bull (still only 3313 km)!
So Red Bull really seems to be in trouble at the moment. There´s no denying the fact that the pre-season tests have turned out to be a worst case scenario for the reigning world champions. The Austrian team has been unable to run any race simulations whilst especially their Mercedes-powered rivals have managed to run several of them. One of the main problems seems to be attached to the rear of the car which causes overheating. Red Bull´s problems are massive and there seems to be no guarantee that they (or any other Renault-powered car) will make it to the chequered flag at Melbourne in two weeks!
So who are the favourites when heading to Melbourne? At this stage I would name two teams immediately: Williams and Mercedes. On the contrary to Red Bull, which seemed to be struggling every single test day, Williams stopped out on track only once during the 12 test days and that engine failure was only due to high mileage issue! Reliability will be the key factor at the beginning of the season. It´s absolutely pointless to have a stunningly quick car if you don´t get to the finish!
One talking point has been the differences in the straight line speed in terms of the different engine suppliers. It has even been said that the Mercedes-powered cars would be 20-30 kilometres faster on a straight than their rivals. Who knows for sure. We have to patiently wait for Melbourne to see the true differences. And then there´re some other new factors such as fuel economy. Who will be able to drive quickest and still manage his fuel consumption? What will happen in Australia is highly and almost totally unpredictable!
I believe in Red Bull that they will fix their problems no matter how hard it is. Somehow it seems Vettel anticipated all these setbacks at the end of his victorious last season. After every win he reminded the team how much he enjoyed winning every time and how he didn´t take the success for granted. There´s one memory which brings me a lot of comfort at this difficult time: the year 2010. Red Bull faced an awful lot of reliability problems during that year and just remember what a close that season had: Vettel took his very first world championship! I definitely acknowledge that this might be a year when I don´t have to bake a championship cake to my colleagues at work but so what! Now I concentrate on enjoying every minute of the thrilling new Formula 1 season!
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