Engineers have promised that the new cars on offer this season will cut lap times and bring back the noise, energy and speed that many detractors claim have been lacking in the recent, ultra-sleek, slightly bland, hybrid cars of previous seasons. Changes will include greater underbody area for downforce, and a delta-shaped front wing. Visually the new, much larger, and much wider tyres are the most obvious change to the exterior of the F1 car this season, a return to pre-1998 dimensions, giving a lot more speed around corners with greater mechanical grip, although this comes with more drag in straight lines. Despite this, the promise is still that the newly-engineered cars will be up to five seconds a lap faster, as the wider cars produces greater downforce by up to 30%. Hopefully, this means teams such as Red Bull can start to bridge the speed gap between the always-dominant Mercedes cars. Indeed, this championshipp season, many bookies have premeptively placed young Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s chances as on-par with favourite Lewis Hamilton’s. But already, Red Bull’s new car hit problems with reliability as part of a “shake-down” test in Barcelona earlier this week.
In a BBC interview, Renault driver Jolyon Palmer described this season’s cars as “probably the quickest Formula 1 has ever seen”. The drivers themselves will be involved much more physically and as a result have been told by their teams to put on muscle over the winter break, contrary to usual advice which is to stay as lean as possible.
Despite all these changes, many experts worry that new aerodynamic regulations will do the exact opposite of what was intended, by reducing opportunity for overtaking as braking distances inevitably become smaller. Pre-season testing is infamously unreliable so as trials begin in Cataluña perhaps the best stance to take is quiet optimism; certainly, Red Bull look fast, but will it be enough to challenge Mercedes’ supreme grip this season? Only time will tell.
