F1 2015 Season Preview: Sauber - Reverting to type

Time was that you knew what to expect from Sauber. It was F1's pillar of the community. A solid midfield presence. It wouldn't stun anyone but it could be relied upon not to steer into choppy waters. But last year it rather failed to live up to billing, sliding down the order and even not scoring a single point which confined the team to finishing behind Marussia in the constructors' table in tenth.

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The C33 had rather a lot wrong with it. The team was keen to point its finger of blame towards the Ferrari power unit, which admittedly was nowhere near the Mercedes on anything. And the difficulties with it were compounded rather by the deal not being inked until October of the preceding year, giving the team next to no time to design the car around the unit, thus tainting the effort at source. It was perhaps this that it Head of Track Engineering Giampaolo Dall'Ara had in mind when he said in hindsight that the team's 2014 struggle was 'formed by circumstances before the season even began'.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Manor - Back from the brink

No one expected them to be here. Certainly not this soon. But by the looks of things, they are.

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In the course of last year Marussia touched both ends of F1's extremes. To begin with the hardy and popular bunch of racers continued its gradual creep towards midfield pace, adapting well to the new rules and benefiting from a Ferrari power unit. And Monaco of course was the zenith. In Jules Bianchi's hands it looked a Q2 contender only for a differential problem to strike in qualifying. But come the race - despite a five second penalty as well as unnecessarily adding five seconds to his solitary pit stop under the safety car - a feisty drive from the undeterred Frenchman was awarded with ninth place, thus breaking the team's points duck. Yes Jules benefited from attrition, but as outlined he was not without his share of bad luck that weekend.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Lotus - From despair to where?

How quickly things change. You often have to make a conscious effort to remind yourself that only 15 months ago the Lotus was by consensus the second best car out there. Last season by comparison could hardly have been more different, with it running habitually off the back of the midfield, and looking evil as it did so.

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As Autosport noted, in the preceding two seasons Lotus averaged 16 points per race. In the whole of 2014 Lotus totalled ten. But for all that the Enstone cars were good ones in those years of points plenty, they concealed rather a lot of trouble just below the surface. Namely that there wasn't enough money around. The loss of a number of key technical staff - not least James Allison and Dirk de Beer to Ferrari - gave us an early hint at it all. Then Kimi Raikkonen blew the cover completely by announcing late in 2013 that he'd been paid 'zero Euro the whole year'.

Then with mightily inconvenient timing the regulations changed fundamentally, rendering the fine Lotus car irrelevant and sending the team back to base camp technically. Then the new car was late arriving. Then the E22 that the team eventually came up with was awful. As Ernest Hemingway said of bankruptcy, Lotus's decline happened gradually, then suddenly.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Toro Rosso - Growing its own

We know what most of us would say if we heard the name of Toro Rosso in a word association test. Red Bull's B team. Where it tries out the latest eager things from its young driver programme. But over recent years the squad's gradually becoming about more than that.

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While it was a not particularly concealed fact for a time that Red Bull was willing to let the team go at the right price, more recently the company has been trying more to make a proper go of Toro Rosso. Not least in developing its own aero department and programme. As recently as 2008 it essentially took its designs from the big team.

The team has been growing, particularly over the last couple of years, and it has been doing so under the technical leadership of one of the most highly-rated guys out there in James Key. It is currently in the process of moving factories too to a larger, more consolidated, facility.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Force India - Getting away with it

Perhaps a few of us are guilty of not giving Force India due credit. Not that long ago when Vijay Mallya took over the team, and gave it its identity, it was back of grid fodder. Since then the team's year-on-year improvement has been a near-constant - only the minor blip of its 2013 results spoil it slightly. And continuing this the 2014 season just passed was its best season so far under its current guise, with a record number of points, its first podium finish since 2009 and equalling its best ever constructors' placing of sixth. We know that like Williams it benefited from the majestic Mercedes power unit (and in Force India's case its gearbox too), but the Silverstone squad still ran ahead of the far larger and similarly-powered McLaren operation for much of the season, only slipping behind with four races to go.

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As expected given the team's relative lack of development budget and resource, it slid down the pecking order as last season went on - a Force India bugbear. But this time it wasn't entirely down to that. Part of the reason for its early good showing was that it produced a solid - you might even say conservative - car with plenty of cooling. The team admitted this was a deliberate ploy so to ensure points in the early races, vital for a team of Force India's resource level. But that excess of cooling made the car harder to develop aerodynamically, especially at the rear. A big mid-year aero upgrade simply didn't work. The team's rather long-in-the-tooth simulation tools was considered one of the culprits too.

F1 2015 Season Preview: McLaren - Known unknowns

'The big question mark is McLaren with Honda. They have obviously got the potential to do very well.

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'That is probably the one that everyone is going to be watching to see what sort of step they have made and what they bring to the table. For the rest, there will be standard steps. They (McLaren) are the one team that is probably more unknown. Ferrari have the opportunity to make a good step. They underperformed last year but there is probably no real strong signs they will gain a second (to close the gap to Mercedes), whereas McLaren could gain that second if everything gels with Honda.'

So said Daniel Ricciardo, just before everyone headed out for the start of pre-season testing, on the subject of who if anyone could possibly, somehow, challenge the Mercs in 2015.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Ferrari - Order out of chaos

'Oddly enough, despite all the catastrophe going on around the outside of it at the management level, they could just fluke into a good car next year because it's the first of the James Allison cars, and the engine this year (in 2014) was deliberately configured to be small and concentrate on heat rejection for the benefit of aerodynamics. Now that's turned out not to be the way to go. So there's a big chunk to be easily found there. So they may well be...much more competitive.'

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These are the words of Motorsport magazine's Mark Hughes late last year. Prophetic I'm sure you'll agree.

The rate of heads on spikes at Maranello that season was rapid even by the standards of its most darkest of days from history: Montezemolo, Domenicali, Fry, Marmorini, Alonso. Plenty of flux was going on elsewhere in addition, with a split from FIAT and a flotation. And then at the season's end almost unthinkably Marco Mattiacci, the guy who replaced Stefano Domenicali as team principal as something of a company high-flyer and apparently was doing a lot of the right things, was himself shown the door amid considerable mystery (some reckon it goes back to something before he got involved in the F1 team).

F1 2015 Season Preview: Williams - Practising Alchemy

F1 alchemy almost never happens. Things change slowly; tortuously; at the margins. And outcomes tend to be determined in large part by who has the most cash to splash.

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But try, on the basis of last season's efforts, telling that to Williams. It started having just experienced a desperately disappointing 2013 campaign wherein it took but two points-scoring finishes, and for the most part was ahead on pace only of the 'B class' of Marussia and Caterham. And yet it finished 2014 making a coherent case that it was the imperious Mercs' most consistent irritant on lap time over the season. And its habitual points-scoring - including nine podiums - totalled up to a haughty third place in the constructors' table, ahead of the much more handsomely-resourced teams of Ferrari and McLaren. It was possibly the most astonishing - almost certainly the most welcomed - story of the year.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Red Bull - Short of breath

Don't let anyone tell you different. In F1 very little remains the same for long.

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And if you'd like a recent example - and an extreme one - then you need look no further than the case of Red Bull.

Around eighteen months ago it was near-impossible to envisage how the team could be beaten. As we stand now it is equally near-impossible to envisage how it can win.

It's not especially the team’s fault either. Not directly anyway. Rather the game changed. In the Bulls' purple patch F1 was close to a spec series on engines; the team could plug in Renault units and go, concentrating instead on the chief discriminator of aerodynamics, which it also so happened to be incredibly good at. The team-manufacturer relationship wasn't as close as usual in a works partnership. But it didn't have to be.

F1 2015 Season Preview: Mercedes - Silver service

It didn't take long for the apparent confirmation. A matter of an hour or so. On the first morning of the opening pre-season test in Jerez while all others did a few first tentative steps (and some didn't even do that) the new Mercedes W06 sprinted from the blocks. Immediately from the get-go of on-track running it functioned like a watch and racked up the mileage, doing 80 laps on the first morning when all others combined managed only slightly more in 96. It all left its rivals stunned. And represented confirmation as if it was required that as far as the Brackley lot are concerned there will be no relent; Mercedes in 2015 will be a lot like Mercedes in 2014. And wasn't caring to conceal the fact.

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Of course Mercedes starts this particular race with an advantage. Its launch-off point of last year's car already is towering, and with only modest regulation changes in the meantime it should count for a lot this year too. Various things - Mercedes starting off as way ahead in the energy recovery game; giving more time, resource and attention apparently to the new formula; a vital innovation in the power unit layout which as the works supplier it was best placed to benefit from - all came together to send the W05 into the most virtuous of circles last season. It was on another level.