Talking about F1 2016 Team-by-Team Season Preview

Now with the season-opening Australian Grand Prix but a week away there are plenty of F1 season previews out there. And Talking about F1 is not one to be left out of this, as you will have likely noticed had you been on this site over the last week or so, given I've written a preview for every competing F1 team in 2016 and its drivers.

All of my team/driver previews are collected in one place; by clicking on the '2016 Team and Driver Guide' tab above you can explore my view on the prospects of every 2016 F1 driver and team. You therefore have no excuse at all for not being genned up before the cars hit the track in Melbourne.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Haas - American dream

On the face of it, not a great deal looked promising. F1's recent previous for squads joining from outside was woeful: of the four debut team slots snapped up for 2010 only one occupant, Manor, still exists and in that case had a very near-miss of extinction. And even so it has never got so much as on the back the sport's peleton, just like none of the other newbies had. And this latest newbie Haas also is far from the first team to come into F1 with much talk of American glory. It's not even the first Haas to do so. Every team in both circles for one reason or another flopped. But it appears that in the shape of this team the sport has, for the first time since Toyota in 2002, got a built-from-nothing squad operating in the main F1 pack right from the off, as well as represents its best chance in a good while of having a successful US operation.

Photo: Octane Photography

One major difference between the lost generation of 2010 and Haas now is that the 'listed parts' teams must produce itself is much shorter, perhaps is these days surprisingly short, and Haas took this and exploited it to the full in order to minimise costs and risk. Indeed this reflects the team's earliest conception - team principal Gunther Steiner stated that the initial discussions with Ferrari about an F1 effort were about running a customer car, when such a prospect looked possible. When it wasn't possible Haas tweaked the approach accordingly.

Technical expert Craig Scarborough explained that Haas "is the first team to make the most of the 'listed parts' regulations and produce only the minimum components required to be classed as an F1 constructor", which includes outsourcing build of the chassis as well as the design and manufacture of the listed parts to Dallara on a contract basis. As Dieter Rencken outlined too, on these regs "Steiner had clearly done his homework" and sourced parts from Ferrari to an extent that "sent shockwaves through the paddock". Many other teams grumbled and Mercedes even sought clarification in Abu Dhabi last year (and indeed certain definitions were amended for future teams, although what Haas had done was pronounced legal).

F1 2016 Season Preview: Manor - To the Manor Born

Wind back to the latter part of 2014 and very few thought we'd see its like again. After the Russian race - the location possibly not a coincidence - the owner of the (then named) Marussia team Andrey Cheglakov walked, plunging the outfit into administration. Of course there was talk of fighting on from the team's two main threads of continuity John Booth and Graeme Lowden, but the apparent death rattle sounded terribly familiar.

Photo: Octane Photography

It still sounded terribly familiar when entrepreneur and Ovo Energy owner Stephen Fitzpatrick arrived on the scene to buy the squad and provide some funding. The team, now back to being called Manor, still required a lot of things to come together in the team's favour to continue, but come together they did. The two main creditors Ferrari and McLaren decided to cooperate rather than get awkward, Ferrari too agreed to continue a supply of 2014 power units. Manor had fortune also that the administrators had chosen to sell off its assets in stages, and while one auction had already happened by this point there remained enough for the team to form a skeletal operation (and in an ironic twist, it bought some of the missing pieces from the auction of Caterham, the other team going into a similar abyss at a similar time). Around 80 of the former 200 staff were reassembled, though many of the rest had since been snapped up elsewhere. Manor was on its feet again.

F1 2016 Season Preview: McLaren - Going back to the start

Nobody said it was easy. No one ever said it would be this hard. Really what that's not been said already can be said about the rekindled McLaren Honda partnership? The one that got us all so excited at its inception?

Photo: Octane Photography

Of course it's one of the most evocative car-engine partnerships in F1 history, but the fervour in advance of 2015 wasn't all down to nostalgia. Honda was starting two years behind the rest in this engine formula, but one could recall the sport's first turbo era when it was the second generation of suppliers that took over to dominate, of which Honda was quintessential. The McLaren team's reasoning was sound too that again in this engine formula being a works partner is what you need if you want to win championships, and McLaren should know given it's willingly ditched the class-leading Merc it was a customer of in order to do this. There also is logic in suggesting this is short term pain that likely was inevitable for the longer term gain. There was an excellent driver line up and superb technical recruits too. Down Woking way after a couple of difficult campaigns the sense of rebirth was tangible.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Sauber - Partial recovery

Sauber last year at least recovered from its husk of a 2014. Then it had somehow finished bottom of the constructors' standings with nil points, the first time it had done either since its 1993 debut. This was something rectified pronto in 2015, yet even so some of the problems of before still lingered.

Photo: Octane Photography

F1 has few certainties, but one that we thought we had disappeared in recent years, Even the usually fastidious Sauber squad, F1's pillar of the community, had sunk into a financial mire as so many others had. It first manifested in 2013 when there were reports of the Swiss team falling behind on its payments, including to its driver Nico Hulkenberg. The squad's no-scoring 2014 with an underdeveloped car seemed a manifestation too. Then for 2015 the team selected two drivers so far as we could tell on their ability to bring money, to the point that perhaps as many as three other drivers who believed they had contracts for that season were elbowed aside unceremoniously. One of them in Giedo van der Garde subjected the team to a public dispute in Melbourne's opening round, both in the courts and at the track. All quite the departure, as whatever else you thought of Sauber it used to be counted upon almost alone in F1 to do its business in the right way. Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn wasn't popular among her peers in Melbourne.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Toro Rosso - B Plus

Toro Rosso, the Red Bull B team. The concept almost naturally seems to follow mere mention of the Faenza squad's name, just as Billy Connolly used to quip that he once thought a nearby football team of his was called 'Patrick Thistle nil'. Yet these days that status sells the team well short, and not just because its driver partnership is one of the most exciting in recent memory. You can add also that the strength of the Toro Rosso chassis in 2015 was among the surprises of the season. This is no mere B team.

Photo: Octane Photography

The STR10 last campaign, from the technical leadership of the highly-rated James Key, was a jewel, to the point that early in the year its drivers thought it was second best behind the Mercedes. It was particularly strong in quick corners although low speed mechanical grip was by the team's admission more iffy. But the big problem was that, although it was quieter about it than the Red Bull big team, it was stymied by a down-on-power Renault unit just the same. And possibly the main regret was that, even allowing for that racing with such a power deficit never was easy, seventh in the constructors' table seemed below the package's potential. Partly it was explained by unreliability (much of which was a Renault rather than a Toro Rosso thing) though partly by that too, inevitably, the team's inexperienced drivers made mistakes. There were some technical impediments, such as having to manage brakes and engine temperatures on occasion such as in Mexico, while a few pit stops - mainly for Carlos Sainz - were botched.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Renault - On the long road back

Last season was at least an improvement on the previous one for Team Enstone, then called Lotus. Well, in certain ways it was. The mistake of the awful twin-tusk nose of 2014 which tended to stall the diffuser in yaw was not repeated, meaning the car was again respectable. And its long-anticipated takeover by Renault - the French concern resolving that being only a power unit supplier wasn't worth its publicity buck, and thus rekindling the partnership that brought titles in the mid-noughties - was confirmed eventually. But for the Enstone lot 2015 didn't have much else to recommend it.

Photo: Octane Photography

For most of it the team was in locked an astonishing hand-to-mouth existence. The proposed Renault buyout dragged on almost interminably - indeed it wasn't confirmed properly until a few days before Christmas - as all sides indulged in brinkmanship, including FOM as Renault argued about payments that certain 'prestige' teams get. And while herein eventual salvation lay in the immediate term it only increased the team's financial struggle. As Romain Grosjean explained in Hungary, "when you are thinking of selling the team you won't put any money in, because it's all loss".

F1 2016 Season Preview: Force India - Indian summer?

Are we guilty of forgetting about Force India? In every sense of it, as how easily is it forgotten that when Vijay Mallya took over the team and gave it its moniker, not all that long ago, it was back of grid fodder? And that ever since its upward trajectory has been striking in its consistency - its constructors' placings year on year reading P10, P9, P7, P6, P7, P6, P6? That in this time it usually has the best points per buck spent ratio on the grid? And that last season it did even better and achieved its highest ever constructors' placing in its current guise, of fifth?

Photo: Octane Photography

Yes it cannot be denied that in 2015 the way to that position was cleared by other teams in its usual vicinity having a disastrous time of it, but still Force India strode into the void with great assurance. Yet even with this the Silverstone squad slips routinely through the cracks of popular consciousness. Perhaps it reflects that it doesn't have the famous name and/or heritage of many of the teams around it, instead appearing the identikit independent outfit owned by a Johnny-Come-Lately entrepreneur, reliant on technical tie-ups with bigger teams (Mercedes in particular right now). Mallya himself also, shall we say, divides opinion and slightly fruity talk of his other business dealings never seems to go away. Indeed there are a more of these than ever right now, to the point that many reports say that as a direct upshot of some of the goings-on he might actually lose control of the team (something that Mallya and the team is denying). But whatever is the case none of the predictions that this will have its knock-on impact on the F1 squad itself have yet come to pass.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Red Bull - Waiting for Renault

For good and ill, F1 is a sport like few others. Take football. The laws may change in the detail but the fundamentals remain: one pitch, two goals, one ball, 11 players each and the like. And therefore the same sorts of teams - those with better players and more money - tend to win. F1 by contrast can change drastically between seasons, and even those most decorated can fall victim. Red Bull knows this now. It dominated the sport for years by entirely focusing on chassis excellence and despite having rather an arms-length relationship with its engine supplier Renault. Then the game changed, for 2014 the sport became an engine formula and overnight Red Bull's approach was obsolete.

Photo: Octane Photography

And that's pretty much been the story since. Red Bull waiting, not so patiently, for Renault to get it right. In 2014 the Milton Keynes team now hamstrung by a big power deficit suddenly was nowhere near a title challenge, but had enough still to be a respectable runner-up and bagged three opportunistic wins. Last year Renault curiously made almost no progress and the Bulls slid back further. Perhaps the team itself didn't quite do itself justice in the early part of the year either - it was impeded particularly by changes to the nose and skidblock regulations that meant it couldn't run its famous 'rake' of before - but from roughly the Silverstone round onwards a bottom rung of the development ladder finally was found. There are still those who believe that chassis-wise the Red Bull remains the thing to have.

Further Red Bull was rather humiliated off the track in 2015 as rather than try to learn the lessons from those now ahead of it by getting closer to its power unit partner it trashed Renault repeatedly in public. Worse it did so without an alternative supplier lined up. One by one the other manufacturers jilted the team, leaving it no choice but to go full circle and return sheepishly to Renault, the 'badging' by new sponsor TAG Heuer supplying sufficient distance for all concerned. Some thought indeed that Red Bull merely was used as a pawn by Bernie et al in his ongoing fight with the manufacturers, but even if this was the case at the time of writing it's not at all obvious what the Bulls got out of it.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Williams - Third rate or third force?

How good was Williams' 2015 campaign? Well it all really is a matter of how you look at it.

Photo: Octane Photography

In many ways the season was a good one - its sharp climb up the order for the 2014 season - harnessing prodigious Mercedes power with an effective low drag chassis - was loosely maintained, as was its third place in the constructors' table albeit with Ferrari moving ahead and Red Bull dropping behind. Its pace probably was more consistent this time; reliability improved too. It also led a design trend with its short nose concept. Yet somehow, even allowing for the near-inevitability that consolidation will never be quite as exciting as the rise, some of the buzz of 2014 was not replicated.

The days from that previous campaign when the car was clear second-best and even giving Mercedes much to think about such as in Austria and to a lesser extent Abu Dhabi were not repeated in 2015; in Silverstone the two Grove cars led the first stint in formation and might even have won with ruthless strategy (and subsequent rain staying away) but that owed mostly to getting the lead off the line rather than pure pace. Instead its cars could be found usually in a lonely place far off the Mercedes and Ferraris but capable of beating the rest.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Ferrari - All eyes on it

It's not the first time this has been pointed out, but how quickly things change in F1. For most of 2014 Ferrari appeared to be descending into the sort of chaos seen in its worst of days. It got the new formula horribly wrong on just about all fronts, only managed a distant fourth in the constructors' standings and for the first time since 1993 there were no wins. Furthermore in response it became a season of the long knives as discarded management and technical bodies piled up, and indeed the team had no fewer than three team principals in the course of the season, surely a record even at Maranello. By the year's end almost unthinkably its star driver Fernando Alonso was gone too.

Photo: Octane Photography

But quickly in 2015, indeed the definitive confirmation was as early as round two, it became clear that the Scuderia somehow and almost in spite of itself had landed on its feet. Throughout the campaign it was best of the rest by the way and even a regular irritant of the imperious Mercedes. Along the way it bagged three wins which was beyond what at the time seemed a highly ambitious target of two set by its new team principal, Maurizio Arrivabene, ex of Marlboro. As I said, things change quickly in F1, and it's in large part because good results on track don't half make all other woes fade to insignificance.

After the flux the pieces settled in something like a better order than what was there before. Arrivabene as it transpired quickly set to work where it mattered, particularly in the team's culture. In 2015's pre-season he said pointedly "when people are under pressure, with everybody trying to cover themselves, this creates a kind of mess into the team." A new way, one in which the time-honoured fear and finger-pointing appeared expunged, was brought in. Then there is the influence of Sergio Marchionne, chairman of FIAT. A man with an astonishing CV and who might be, politely, called a bruiser. Last year at the point of helping himself to the Ferrari chairman role he promised to "kick some ass" and take some risks. That he's done both with the team and with his political muscle flexing on the squad's behalf. Even Ferrari's numbers came in with its driver change, as with a reinvigorated Sebastian Vettel barely a beat was missed.

F1 2016 Season Preview: Mercedes - Bull run

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme". Contrary to popular belief Mark Twain probably didn't actually say that, but the sentiment itself holds truth. And it applies absolutely to F1.

Photo: Octane Photography

It may seem absurd to draw parallels between the expressive arrivistes of Red Bull and the aristocrats of Mercedes, but there are a good few in there, and not just because the torch of F1 dominance was passed directly from one to the other. The Merc squad learnt the lessons from the extended reign of the Milton Keynes squad that came before its own. Like Red Bull it constructed a well-resourced yet nimble organisation with plenty of technical excellence and focused entirely on making F1 cars go quicker. Like Red Bull it saw the opportunity with a big regulation change to vault to the front. And then - in something that perhaps is the most impressive element of the lot - was able to maintain its advantage with almost continuous incremental improvement. Unlike Red Bull it benefits too from clearly the sport's sweetest engine, and one made in-house. But very much as was the case for Red Bull, its pursuers - with all of their changes, posturing and grand proclamations year upon year - don't seem to get any closer to answering the big question of how to topple them.