F1 2012 Season Preview: Marussia - Moving in the right direction or a false dawn?

This year should represent something of a clean slate for Marussia. Much changed in mid-2011, with their previous unorthodox approach tempered, and there are signs that they're beginning to move in the right direction. But, despite all of this, preparations for the start of the 2012 season have not gone to plan.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

The team entered the sport in 2010 as a collaboration between F3 Euroseries squad Manor Motorsport and Wirth Research. Prior to their debut the team distinguished themselves mainly via a couple of avenues: one is they acquired the name Virgin Racing after the Virgin Group acquired the title sponsorship rights, the other is they raised a lot of eyebrows by stating that the car would be designed without use of wind tunnels, instead using only CFD computer simulations of airflow.

Times have been difficult since. Their debut year was tricky enough (and contained an egregious error by the team, where they had to admit that their fuel tank was too small for the car to last a race distance without swingeing fuel-saving). And, worse, 2011 represented a step backwards from that, falling even further behind the pace as well as further behind the progress of Lotus who'd entered the sport at the same time as they.

F1 2012 Season Preview: HRT - Struggling on

Without wishing to sound patronising, the fact that HRT are still going probably ranks as their best achievement. In their short existence as an F1 team they've been widely derided, have often given the outward impression of stumbling from one crisis to the next, and usually concerned more immediately with surviving than making progress up the order. But they continue to struggle on, against the odds somewhat, into their third season in the sport. And, relatively speaking, as 2012 starts the future in some ways looks a bit more promising for them now than at any point before.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

As Campos Meta, the team entered the sport for the 2010 season, at the time assuming a strict and swingeing budget cap to be in place for all teams. Perhaps it was naive to think that would hold, but whatever the case throughout the team's life money and sponsors have been extremely hard to come by (and worse, F1 is a business that makes it even harder for new teams by keeping television-rights income among the established members of the top 10 teams). The money factor made itself felt before even their first race, financial problems resulting in majority shareholder José Ramón Carabante taking over control of the team from Adrián Campos, with Colin Kolles parachuted in to replace Campos as team principal and the team rebranded as HRT.

For the next two years HRT's cars have spent most of the time off the back of the pack, and although they've avoided placing last in the constructors' championship in both seasons (by finishing ahead of Virgin/Marussia in both 2010 and 2011) that owes something to the slightly strange and distortive countback system in establishing the order. And at the start of both seasons they've made all cringe by still being in the process of building their cars as the practice sessions were underway for the opening round.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Caterham - Showing that F1 is difficult

The case of Caterham (née Lotus) demonstrates vivdily that F1 is difficult.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

Of course, this is exactly how it should be at the sport's pinnacle. But it also might not always be much compensation to those at Caterham as they struggle to extract themselves from the group of 'new' teams at the back and get themselves into the midfield battle.

Three teams made their debuts in F1 in 2010, part of the brave new resource restricted, post-manufacturer, F1 world. Each were the first non-manufacturer backed teams to start from scratch in the sport since 1997, and it's showed as, over the subsequent two years, they've almost always run a distance behind the established cars.

But of these Caterham/Lotus have definitely stood distinct. Despite only existing as a telephone in a room months before their 2010 debut, they have been by far the most convincing of the three.

Caterham have been doing all the right things in their quest to move up the order, and in many ways are world away from Virgin/Marussia and HRT, who entered F1 at the same time as they. They have their own factory, everything's under one roof (and this year they plan to move to Leafield, in F1's 'silicon valley'), they have their own design office and aero programme, they have the same engine and gearbox as the champion constructor (which dictates a similar rear end of the car as them), their number of staff (around 250) is creeping up on the sort of numbers as at the midfield teams, they have fine brains in the likes of Mike Gascoyne and Mark Smith (among others), and they now share wind tunnel time with Williams. And all of this is backed by a substantial budget and investment provided by Tony Fernandes. In 2011 they stretched their advantage over the 'other two', usually lapping somewhere in the region of 1.5 to 2 seconds faster. But, at the same time, the midfield pack remained significantly and maddeningly beyond their reach. F1 is difficult, as I said.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Williams - Arresting the slide?

October the 24th 2004 is a very long time ago. And for anyone associated with Williams it must seem especially so.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

That, if you hadn't worked it out, is the date on which Williams last won a Grand Prix. Upwards of seven years ago in other words. If you'd told anyone associated with F1 back then that the Grove team would endure such an expanse without winning a race (indeed, with hardly looking like winning one), and that come 2011 they'd be further away from competitiveness than ever, they probably would have thought you'd flipped your lid. Yet that's exactly what has happened.

For a long time the assumption among almost all observers was that Williams would bounce back inevitably. How could they not? This after all was an operation synonymous with dominance and engineering excellence, with seven drivers' titles and nine constructors' titles to their name, won in a seventeen year period.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Toro Rosso - Opportunity knocks

If you were to ask any F1 fan to take part in a word association test, and then say 'Toro Rosso', the phrase 'Red Bull's B team' would not be far from the first response.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

It's certainly an odd state of affairs, as well as a potential conflict of interest, the likes of which it's hard to imagine being allowed in other sports (for example, could you imagine Manchester United being allowed to buy Bolton Wanderers?). Still, the relationship has just about stayed above board since Toro Rosso came into being in 2006, including throughout 2008 wherein the B team were generally the more competitive of the two.

The technical ties between Red Bull and Toro Rosso aren't as strong as they once were, and while some rubbing off of ideas may be inevitable Toro Rosso definitely stand on their own two feet design-wise these days. But one B team role for Toro Rosso does remain at the forefront: that of developing drivers for the big team. And for that reason the Faenza squad have an all-new driver line up for 2012.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Sauber - More of the same?

Sauber are often characterised - perhaps unfairly - as archetypal midfield runners. They're always there, they make the best of the resources available to them and have a good record of giving young, promising drivers their chance. But on the flip side they never seem able, or willing, to reach for the stars.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

In addition to this, Sauber have a time-honoured tradition of, after producing a good car out of the box, gradually sliding down the competitive order as the season progresses, due to being out-developed by the teams around them (presumably due in turn to not having their money).

As with most assumptions in F1, there is only a certain level of truth in these. Coming in seventh in the 2011 constructors' table behind Force India, with excellent resources inherited from the BMW days, is indeed a rather underwhelming outcome. And Sauber did indeed slide down the order in 2011 in what looked like the classic style. But there were some peculiar circumstances behind all of this.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Force India - Punching above their weight

It doesn't seem that long ago that what was the Jordan team, under the guises of the likes of Midland and Spyker, were fodder somewhere off the back of the pack. It's fair to say that when Vijay Mallya, four and a half years ago, purchased the outfit and renamed them Force India few expected that state of affairs to change much. But change it has: the transformation of the team in the time since has been remarkable.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

A restructure and technical tie-up with McLaren later and Force India have made tangible progress year-on year with each season's constructors championship finish higher than the one before (as Force India their finishes have been, in order: 10th, 9th, 7th and 6th). And they finished 2011 as firmly the best of the rest behind the 'big four teams', even sneaking ahead of the Mercedes pair on occasion, including in Adrian Sutil's stellar run to sixth place in the final round in Brazil. Given an extra round or two they could well have sneaked ahead of Renault in the constructors' table as well.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Lotus - Bouncing Back

The rule changes between 2011 and 2012 are not major by historical standards (despite the obvious aesthetic alteration). In such circumstances seismic shifts of the F1 pecking order tend not to happen. It could be the same this year, but even with this there is reason to think that Lotus (née Renault) may be this year's highest climbers.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

This is for a number of reasons. Last year was a difficult one for them in peculiar circumstances, so some bounce back should be expected, especially so for a unit that have won world titles in recent times (indeed, they've won two constructors' titles since McLaren last won one). They've got a new and exciting driving line up, who clearly have had a galvanising impact on the squad. And, most importantly of all, their new car looks like it's a good one.

It seems odd that after the first pre-season test of 2011, in which Robert Kubica topped the times and the R31 caused a round of head scratching in the pit lane, particularly in regard to its innovative forward-facing exhausts, Renault (as Lotus were then) were talked of as the season's dark horses. The team's decline from this point started almost immediately and barely abated as 2012 progressed. Kubica put himself out for that season (and this) with injuries sustained in a rally accident, but worse as far as the team's prospects were concerned the exhaust concept proved to be a blind alley, and even worse than that precluded development in the aggressive exhaust blowing of the diffuser which was the key development area for competitiveness last year. This all left the team as sitting ducks, and they were counting down the days until 2011 finished long before the season was out.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Mercedes - Will the Silver Arrow hit the target?

So we are about to start the latest chapter of the curious case of Mercedes GP. It is a marque with an exemplary heritage in F1, including recent success. They took over the champion constructor at the end of 2009, and the team is headed up by one of the finest brains in the sport. And yet, in the proceeding two years all they can point to is three podium finishes in total, with third place their best result.

Credit: Alex Comerford / CC

If anything, 2011 represented a step backwards, with no podium places at all. Of course, in both 2010 and 2011 there were mitigating circumstances in their relative struggles. In 2010 Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn could point to the necessary 40% cuts of the Brawn staff during the previous season, with hampered development of the 2010 machine. In 2011 the reasons were harder to put down to circumstance, as the car was fundamentally flawed. This was mainly down to a too-short wheelbase (which was in turn related to the team not foreseeing the potential of aggressive exhaust blowing of diffusers when designing the car), which resulted in too high a centre of gravity on full tanks on race day, as well as excessive rear tyre wear. This all added up to them qualifying an average of 1.6 per cent off the pole time over the 2011 season, and ending up a very distant fourth in the constructors' standings.

But even with all of the excuses, the record of achievement is not what anyone at the team hoped for and, three years into the project, signs of progress must be shown this year. If not, Stuttgart HQ may have something to say.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Ferrari - Red Revival?

Ferrari have been the talk of pre-season testing. But, unfortunately from their perspective, it's not been for the right reasons necessarily.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

From looking at the F2012 it's clear that Ferrari have gone radical this year. The machine features, among other things, an aggressively sculpted rear end and, for the first time since 2001 on an F1 car anywhere, pullrod front suspension (bringing aero/packaging benefits). In an probability, this is exactly what they need - the Scuderia have been accused of creeping conservatism in their designs in recent years. However, the flip side of this approach is that, from testing, it appears that it's taking a while for them to get their heads around their new creation.

Ferrari's success this season therefore hinges on whether these struggles reflect merely time taken to find the sweet spot of their radical design (and if so how quickly they can do this), or whether they reflect fundamental flaws in the car.

F1 2012 Season Preview: McLaren - Playing it straight

Prepare yourself for an amazing fact. Since the end of the 1991 season there have been 40 F1 world championship titles available (20 for drivers and 20 for constructors), and in this time McLaren have only won only four of them. Indeed, of the 20 constructors' titles McLaren in that period have won just one.

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

This clearly isn't good enough for a team of McLaren's resources, heritage and ambition. And while there have indeed been near misses in that time, it was their former team principal Ron Dennis who was prone to say that second place is but the first of the losers.

Last year was more of the same for the Woking outfit: while they can console themselves that they were by far Red Bull's (or rather, Sebastian Vettel's) closer challengers, championships were out of their reach, and indeed were never likely.

They were compromised by starting the year on the back foot. Pre-season testing was to a large extent a write-off, with their complex and troublesome 'octopus' exhaust system the culprit. They abandoned the idea prior to the opening round, thus saving face, instead going with a system remarkably similar to that on the Red Bull (even Paddy Lowe concedes it was essentially a copy). In the end, they took six fine wins in 2011 and were stronger than Red Bull in some areas, such as switching on their tyres in cool conditions (it's perhaps not coincidence that three of their wins were on cool/damp days), and on occasion they appeared the faster race car (though almost never in qualifying). But the pre-season malarkey rather precluded a serious run at the titles: McLaren were never more than an occasional irritant to Vettel and Red Bull in that sense. There is a view in and around McLaren that with a more solid pre-season they could have been champions last year. This may well be true, but it's worth reflecting that even in the latter part of last year they weren't on the Bulls' pace consistently (though they rarely were too far off). Only in Japan in that period did they clearly beat them.

F1 2012 Season Preview: Red Bull - Continuing to charge

Each of the 12 teams in F1 no doubt will have been locked constantly in disparate and frenzied design and development of their 2012 machines over recent months. But across all of this activity one question will have run through it like in a stick of rock: 'have we done enough to match Red Bull?'

Credit: Gil Abrantes / CC

At the outset of yet another year the Red Bull is the car they all fear, the car they all must beat. The eager anticipation of the RB8's launch, in particular how it would interpret the new nose regulations as well as whether it would feature the 'next big thing' in F1 design, demonstrated the extent to which the Bull has become the gold standard.

The pace of the car, helped by Adrian Newey's design genius and a technical department moulded in his own image, has been there for a few years, and last year the Red Bull squad moved to another level by showing the same preponderance organisationally. The slight waywardness of 2009 and 2010, almost like they couldn't quite cope with the prodigious car they had at their disposal, is now long gone. Almost never did Red Bull fail to make the most of their potential in 2011, they were quick everywhere, dominating even at tracks like Spa and Monza that were previously perceived as their weaker venues. Strategies were razor sharp, and their pit stops (alongside those of Mercedes) were the quickest out there. And, unless you include Sebastian Vettel's puncture early in the Abu Dhabi round, never once did a car failure stop them in a race. For a designer like Newey who isn't shy to take things to the edge, that is an astonishing achievement.