Sunday marks the start of a brand-new Formula 1 season and Motorsport Week takes a look at five key themes to note down ahead of the Australian Grand Prix.
Can Ferrari challenge Mercedes?
During testing Ferrari was ahead, but in Australia the pendulum has swung firmly in favour of Mercedes, which has undertaken extensive work in understanding and unearthing gains from its W10 since it last turned a wheel in Barcelona. The W10 has been the pacesetting machine all weekend, facilitating Lewis Hamilton in taking his sixth straight Melbourne pole, and eighth overall. It marked quite the turnaround since testing – and the gap of seven-tenths back to Ferrari surprised both of Formula 1’s leading teams. Sebastian Vettel conceded that Ferrari has yet to get a true handle on its SF90 and remained confident that the team can fight in race trim. And it would be remiss not to take him seriously. In 2017 Mercedes’ inferior tyre usage enabled Vettel to press home Ferrari’s race advantage while 12 months ago a well-timed Virtual Safety Car period wrecked Hamilton’s prospects and it was Vettel who triumphed. Of Hamilton’s Melbourne poles, only two from seven have been converted into a race win…
How will Red Bull-Honda fare in race trim?
Max Verstappen’s last-gasp effort in Q3 has given Red Bull a place on the second row of the grid, splitting the Ferrari drivers, marking the best qualifying result for a Honda-powered car in dry-weather conditions since the marque returned to Formula 1. It’s an encouraging result for the team considering not only the nascent nature of the Red Bull-Honda partnership, but also the fact that Albert Park is historically one of its weakest venues. The question now is whether Honda can carry that fight through to race trim, with Red Bull’s long-run pace one of the big unknowns, following differing results in pre-season testing. In terms of gauging that interest it can track its progress in different manners; Pierre Gasly will start from 17th position and will hope that he has sufficient propulsion to surge into the points.
Can Haas take an early lead in the midfield?
Haas delivered on its pre-season promise as Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen qualified sixth and seventh respectively, firmly best of the rest. Grosjean was as close to Vettel as Vettel was to Hamilton, and held a gap of nearly half a second to nearest midfield challenger McLaren. Haas has typically run well at Albert Park but 12 months ago its race came to a heart-breaking end when two failures in the pit lane robbed the team of a huge haul of points. In 2019 it has given itself a golden opportunity to consign that horror show to the past and start the year not only spearheading the midfield on-track but also doing so in the championship standings.
Can Ricciardo salvage home points?
This has not been a strong weekend for Renault, which has so far failed to show a substantial year-on-year increase in either performance or position. Mechanical gremlins have struck, while Daniel Ricciardo had seat issues, but for the factory team to be out-qualified by a rookie in a customer team did not reflect well on Renault’s chassis. Ricciardo, understandably, has been the centre of attention all weekend but will start his home Grand Prix from only 12th on the grid, as he gets up to speed in his new surroundings. “I never want to say I was naïve but it is naïve to think I will just jump into a new car and feel amazing straight away,” he conceded. “Especially when it is a car that for now has less downforce than what I am used to. I don’t expect it too take too long but the reality is that for everything to be perfect I will just have to build up to it.”
How bad will it be for Williams?
Working on the principle of pure mathematics and field spread there is a possibility that Williams could be lapped rather early in the Grand Prix, and could even be lapped by the entirety of the midfield. The team has endured a horror show of an Australian Grand Prix weekend but the lack of shock or surprise at its position emphasises the manner in which it has fallen. Rookie George Russell felt he and his side of the garage extracted the maximum from the FW42 and was still 1.3s behind Carlos Sainz Jr., while a messy session for Robert Kubica consigned the returning Pole to plum last. Williams is effectively in an extended test session and post-qualifying Russell pointed to a fundamental flaw with the FW42 that will take months to fix. It may be longer. And there’s no guarantee that it will launch Williams anywhere other than slightly-less-further-off-the-pace. This could be a brutal race for the once great team.
Sunday's 58-lap Australian Grand Prix will begin at 16:10 local time
