With the 2015 season and its sorry tale of predictable racing now but a distant memory, focus is fully fixated on the intrigue the 2016 season is already offering Formula One’s famished fans.
With the exception of Sauber, which was caught out by late calendar changes that brought testing earlier into the year, every team shook down its 2016 car during the opening four days, and though testing data is notoriously difficult to read, possible narrative threads are already presenting themselves.
Is Ferrari a Mercedes-beater?
It’s the question on the lips of every Formula One fan: can Ferrari overturn Mercedes’s crushing dominance in 2016?
The 2015 season, though one-way traffic as far as Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes’s title defences were concerned, offered glimmers of hope that the future could be a whole lot brighter.
Take for one Ferrari mammoth upturn in form between 2014 and 2015, guided partly by design guru James Allison. The 2015 car had already been decided when he was signed in 2014, but this year he earned a clean slate, and by all accounts the SF16-H looks quick.
The quiet air of confidence at Ferrari translated into it topping the timesheets on three of the four days and setting the quickest lap overall. Advantage Scuderia.
But Mercedes’s 2016 car demonstrated demoralising reliability, setting a record 675 laps over four days. It was completing so many laps that drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg had to swap themselves out of the car at midday because the physical strain was too much for their mere mortal bodies.
Further, Mercedes only used the medium tyre, which is two steps harder than the ultrasoft tyre Ferrari used to set its headline time. Toppling the Silver Arrows in 2016 won’t be easy.
Will McLaren recover?
Early signs were positive when the 2016 McLaren-Honda completed 2013 laps of relatively uneventful testing over the first two days. The problems it had with deploying electrical energy had greatly improved, as had the car’s handling.
On day three, the car was retired after 51 laps with a hydraulic leak, and on day four the reliability gremlins that plagued Honda in 2015 came back at full force, restricting Fernando Alonso to just three untimed laps.
Honda’s F1 boss Yasuhisa Arai is in the process of handing over his duties to Yusuke Hasegawa as he prepares for retirement, but the soon-to-be motorsport chief could be set for a baptism of fire should the problems of the first test prove anything other than anomalous.
Can Haas score points on debut?
The last time Formula One welcomed new teams was in 2010 when Manor, Lotus, Campos, and USF1 were set to join the grid.
Manor changed its name to Virgin, then Marussia, then almost collapsed in December 2014 before being resuscitated as Manor again for 2015. Lotus became Caterham before collapsing in 2014. Campos became Hispania Racing before turning into HRT and collapsing in 2012. USF1 never started a race.
By comparison Haas has had a dream debut. It logged 281 laps with minimal fuss, and there isn’t an administrator or liquidator in sight.
The team’s secret is its exploiting of the rules to buy as many parts as is allowed from Ferrari and outsourcing the rest to experienced chassis builder Dallara. The result is a collection of parts that are tried and tested, leaving team principal Gunther Steiner only to find the Allen key to join them all together.
At the time The Phuket News went to press, only two days of testing remained before the season proper kicks off on 20 March in Melbourne, Australia. It may only be testing, but 2016 is shaping up to be a fascinating year of motor racing.
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