Formula One fans have it tough these days. “What’s the point in watching a bunch of cars follow each other around a track 70 times?” is the gist of what we get asked most often – to which we offer feeble defences like ‘pit stop strategy’ and ‘driver rivalry’. The sport, which remembers the epic battles between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, and the rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda (documented in Ron Howard’s 2013 film Rush ), is today reduced to hoping one of the Mercedes drivers suffers a mechanical failure, so that someone else can take the top step of the podium.
This level of dominance by a single team is part of the sport, and the situation was much the same when I started watching it in 2001. Mika Hakkinen was on his way out, but I soon found another young Finn, Kimi Raikkonen, to root for, as he took the battle to Michael Schumacher’s unstoppable Ferrari in a fast but spectacularly unreliable McLaren, missing a couple of World Championships by the skin of his teeth. This era also gifted us Fernando Alonso, who would go on to become a double world champion with Renault, and by 2007, Lewis Hamilton, one of the most naturally-talented racers the sport has seen. Today, all three are world champions, but the story of the sport has changed.
F1 was never much of a spectator sport, with no single seat in the grandstand offering a view of the entire track. The appeal lay in the racing, and the wail of the engines. In the early 2000s, the engines were powerful three-litre V10s, which were downgraded to 2.4-litre V8s by 2006. In 2014, as a result of growing ecological concerns, the engines were downgraded again to small 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 units, with electric energy becoming a major contributor. This move, combined with the ban on refuelling during a race, restrictions on the number of parts allotted for an entire season, and the introduction of rapidly-degrading tyres to encourage more pit stops, led to a culture where the best racers in the world spent races looking after their cars and eking out mileage instead of indulging in on-track fights. The result has been a loss of popularity to more action-packed motorsports like NASCAR and the World Rally Championship (WRC), and dwindling spectator turnout.
But this is a sport where the rules are constantly upgraded, and the 2017 season brings with it some massive overhauls that give the F1 fan in me some reason for optimism. Bernie Ecclestone, long-time supremo of the sport, has been ousted by its new owners, Liberty Media. The cars are now wider and designed to have increased grip, and tyres estimated to last longer, letting drivers push them harder than the last few seasons. The evidence of this is already beginning to show, with pre-season testing in Barcelona witnessing lap times quicker than those posted throughout the last season. The cars themselves look like they mean business, with many sporting shark fin-like aerodynamic detailing.
Things on the driver front are at an interesting juncture as well. Last year’s world champion, Nico Rosberg, shook up the paddock when he announced his retirement from the sport, days after winning the championship, leaving a seat open at Mercedes, the most dominant team of the last few seasons, alongside the formidable Lewis Hamilton. This opening has since been filled by Valtteri Bottas, who moves from Williams to Mercedes; which in turn sees Brazilian Felipe Massa return to the team, despite announcing his retirement from the sport last year. Whether Bottas takes the fight to teammate Hamilton, or is content playing second fiddle, will make up a large part of the 2017 narrative.
Ferrari, who have shown flashes of brilliance in the past few years, and who lost their technical director James Allison to Mercedes last year, have seemingly woken up, with Raikkonen displaying serious pace in pre-season testing. While these results need a heavy helping of salt, as testing often sees teams hide their true potential, the early marker gives the Ferrari tifosi hope that the Prancing Horse may yet make a charge this year.
Red Bull had a relatively low-key pre-season, but with the talents of Daniel Ricciardo and the prodigious 19-year-old Max Verstappen – who won hearts by slicing through the field on a rain-soaked Brazilian Grand Prix last year – behind the wheel, it will be interesting to see if they can spring a surprise on Mercedes.
Fernando Alonso, 16 years Verstappen’s senior and one of the legendary old guard along with Raikkonen, is still in the hunt, though McLaren’s deal to secure engines from Honda continues to plague the team, as reliability issues cost them valuable time throughout testing. One can always count on Alonso to drag an unworthy car up the order, but unless Honda gets things into gear, Alonso’s chances of being a serious world championship contender seem to be fading away.
Among the others, Williams, Toro Rosso and Force India, who have been battling in the midfield, look to repeat the close competition. Newcomer Haas, who had a strong debut season last year with Romain Grosjean turning in a few impressive drives, and a financially-stabilising Sauber, now with the young Pascal Wehrlein joining them, look to crash the midfield party.
In the midst of all this is Lewis Hamilton, deprived of his fourth world title by teammate Rosberg last year, hungry to get back to winning ways.
Will his Mercedes streak off into the distance again, or will the scarlet Ferraris of Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel finally have an answer? We’ll find out this Sunday, when the five red lights go out at Melbourne.
