Formula 1 starts the season with the Bahrain Grand Prix. During the three-day test drives in the desert, the ten racing teams put their new cars through their paces. Time for a check – what are the teams’ work areas before things really get down to business?
Red Bull: The enemy in your own team?
Aside from a brief braking problem and a miscalibrated accelerator pedal, the new RB20 purred like a kitten during testing. On the first day, world champion Max Verstappen drove and drove and drove and drove – in the face of everyone else. “The Red Bull is faster over a lap and it is faster over a racing distance,” says RTL and sport.de-Expert Christian Danner.
The competition predicts the bulls between half a second and a second. The world champion team’s only construction site is outside the racing car and is called Christian Horner. Red Bull Austria has rejected the allegations made by an employee against the team boss. But the “second-class acquittal” (see above). sport.de-Columnist Felix Görner) shows that the effervescent empire is torn apart.
Does this also apply to the F1 team? Are there groups forming, a pro-Horner and an anti-Horner faction? If so, it could also have a negative impact on the team’s overall performance.
Mercedes: Diva is history – but the W15 needs wings
Mercedes got its biggest problem under control before the start of the season: While the predecessors W13 and W14 were unpredictable divas whose driving behavior varied from corner to corner, the W15 is finally a “real”, a well-rounded racing car again. The unstable rear is a thing of the past, if anything the Mercedes tends to slightly understeer, said George Russell, summing up the test drives. The silver-black arrow has potential, but the tests have shown that Mercedes still lacks a lot of pace.
This means: Mercedes has to learn to understand its new car very quickly in the first Grands Prix in order to upgrade the basic car with the necessary upgrades and, ideally, make it capable of winning. Or as Russell puts it: “The car’s handling is as we would expect it to be. We just need to make it faster now.” McLaren showed how this works last year.
Ferrari: Looking for racing speed
The Scuderia has also made great progress in terms of drivability and has “remedied significant deficits, especially on the rear axle,” analyzes RTL commentator Danner. During the tests, the Reds were convincing in two respects: on the one hand, Carlos Sainz drove the fastest time, and on the other hand, Ferrari completed the second most laps.
This means that the SF-24 Macchina has apparently inherited one of its predecessor’s strengths: Ferrari was already strong on one lap at the end of the previous season, sometimes even ahead of Verstappen in qualifying. The main task for the red engineers: Find racing speed in order to be able to keep up with the bulls over the distance in 2024. In Maranello, too, a lot of brainpower has to flow to make the car faster. There is a decent basis.
Another homework task: Ferrari must completely internalize the structures and processes introduced under team boss Fred Vasseur in the second year so that outrageous strategy mistakes are finally over.
McLaren: Drive through first
Lando Norris made no secret of his disappointment after the Bahrain test. “Certain things didn’t allow us to improve as much as I would have liked,” said the Briton. Above all, McLaren has to improve the reliability of the MCL38. These particular things primarily concern reliability. The team from Woking took second to last place in the test lap table, defects in the clutch and fuel system forced Norris and Oscar Piastri to take unplanned breaks in the garage.
The drivers repeatedly hinted at the car’s potential. Fundamentally, McLaren needs to improve. After all, the traditional racing team is starting from a much better plateau than last year, when they suddenly found themselves at the back of the field.
In 2023, the Papaya engineers impressively demonstrated that McLaren can further develop its car.
Aston Martin: Update solutions are needed
The Racing Greens made a solid impression at the three-day dress rehearsal and were firmly in the middle of the field in terms of both laps and time. Here, too, it is important to quickly decode the AMR24 in order to find the necessary update solutions.
It seems unlikely that Fernando Alonso will end up behind the Red Bulls like last year. Behind Mercedes and Ferrari, Aston Martin could initially be the fourth force ahead of McLaren.
Alpine: Sacrebleu!
The French have been falling far short of their own standards for years. In the first races, Alpine could even fall to the back of the field, the A524 seemed so slow and inconsistent during the tests. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly were “really slow,” commented F1 expert Danner. Alpine was the only racing team that did not manage a time in the range of 1:31 minutes.
Alpine has endless construction sites: the Renault engine has too little power, the driving experience is poor, the air resistance is too high, the downforce is too low. Ocon and Gasly slipped around conspicuously during the test. The fact that team boss Bruno Famin and Ocon still see a lot of potential in the Alpine package sounds like a desperate slogan for perseverance.
But how long does Renault want to finance the F1 tragedy?
Williams: Eliminate defects!
Thanks to Alex Albon, the traditional British team can fight for points again in 2024. But to do this, Williams has to banish the defect devil from the FW46. The list of breakdowns during the tests was long: fuel pump, drive shaft, brake system. 299 laps in three days meant last place in the kilometer ranking.
Racing Bulls: Drivers have to deliver
The feared copy of last year Red Bull has not materialized. The Racing Bulls still benefit from the fact that they source the front and rear suspension from the big bull brother. Overall, the package made a good impression; some experts even see the Bulls on a par with McLaren and Aston Martin.
“If you compare the starting point of AlphaTauri 2023 with the starting point of the Racing Bulls, they are starting in a completely different league this year,” says Christian Danner. This also means: The drivers have to deliver. Daniel Ricciardo drove solidly last year after his unexpected comeback, but only showed the “old honey badger” in the final phase. As always, Yuki Tsunoda presented himself as a “lucky bag”. Both drivers have to deliver consistent performance – substitute Liam Lawson is shuffling his hooves.
Clean: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere
Apparently the Swiss didn’t really make any progress over the winter. While Andreas Seidl is preparing the (anything but silent) Audi entry in the background, the operational “stakeholders” are looking for the “kick” for the C44.
The crux of the matter for the Sauber team is to develop a fundamentally weak package and find solutions. It’s hard to say exactly what the problem is, and perhaps people in Hinwil don’t know exactly. One thing is clear: the bright green and black car has an aggressive design, but is clearly too slow.
Haas: The monster is gone, the snail isn’t
The positive news first: Thanks to the rear axle from Maranello, the new Haas is no longer the tire-eating monster of last year. “I don’t think they’re automatically selected for the Red Lantern,” RTL expert Danner gives the US team a little hope. But: “They haven’t gotten particularly much faster.”
Haas is still heavily responsible for the fact that in the final phase of 2024 a major upgrade that resembled a B-specification did not materialize at all. Haas has at least solved the fundamental tire eating problem. However, the team is in the dark about how to develop it to turn the snail into at least a beetle.
Martin Armbruster