Round 1: Australia 2016 - Preview

Greetings Internet, 

The winter off-season has come to an end and everything is back to normal, well it will be in a couple of days time, and this also marks the sixth year for blog HQ... although after the disaster the second half of 2015 encountered I'm not sure that counts. This time around blog HQ knows that there will have to be a few adjustments to the way coverage is presented in this dark and underpopulated corner of the internet. Because in reality it is no longer practical to spend several hours on both a Saturday and a Sunday writing up precisely what the vast majority of people have already seen. In the past I have attempted, generally unsuccessfully to inject humour and other clever things into the monolithic posts, but that never quite went to plan - and it certainly didn't sort out the whole issue of taking up to five hours to produce a post race document. 

So for the next few rounds things might get a little experimental around here - playing with different formats and approaches until one settles and makes sense. At the moment I don't know what those formats will be, I do intend to keep this corner of the internet functioning but I need a quicker more easily produced version of it in all reality.

Enough about that, this is about the first race of the season and seeing if anything that happened in testng is actually relevant. Where we will see Haas compete in their first race and we might get a show and tell from Mad Max as he shows us what his parents got him for Christmas. We shall see if Gutierrez on his return to the grid can take over where Maldonado left off and whether anyone can actually deal with Mercedes. But first...

The News

You might have thought with the start of the season being so close they wouldn't bother messing with the core qualifying format... well it turns out that they in fact would. It was decided a little while ago there was going to be a change afoot - then Bernie being Bernie came up with a mad idea that added a 'handicap' time to the top finishers from the previous race. For example the previous winner or championship leader would have a mandatory block of time added to his fastest qualifying lap. Something to mix the grid up and to keep Mercedes off pole - to avoid this catastrophe the teams voted in an alternative solution. Something called 'Elimination' qualifying - in the beginning this wasn't going to happen until the Spanish GP. But then that was changed and a compromised version was going to be put in place for round one. Then things changed again... don't you just love consistency in the rule making process...

The original version suddenly became the plan and it is going to be introduced this weekend in Melbourne. So what is elimination qualifying, well it seems to be an idea borrowed from the old Burnout video game series - and if the FIA and Bernie are now learning about racing from EA we are well and truly doomed. Next we'll have races where the final few laps are only available as DLC and car physics mean that even the highest grip cars will powerslide through every corner. Finally bonus points will be added for oversized rims, neon lights and hydraulics. Mocking EA aside, the new system works on the premise that the car with the slowest time in a particular session will become eliminated and has to return to the pits. The next slowest then faces the same fate 90 seconds later until the required number of cars are eliminated - the survivors progress into the next round. In Q1 there is a seven minute amnesty on the eliminations and at the seven minute mark the first car is booted out. A total of seven cars are eliminated before Q2. The amnesty is cut to six minutes in Q2 before people start getting eliminated and again seven drivers are eliminated before Q3. In the final shootout the remaining eight cars have five minutes before the eliminations start and they continue until there are only two cars left fighting for pole position.

There are some potential gains for this sort of format - firstly there will be more cars on track at any one time because the only realistic way to avoid relegation is to stay on track and improve your time to avoid being last. So there will be less empty track running, secondly it will add more strategy and unpredictability to the session without necessarily artificially messing up the grid like Bernie wanted....but

There are also some problems, problems I don't think the powers that be have fully realised as of yet - firstly traffic is going to be a serious problem at some tracks, Monaco I am looking at you. Because there will be more cars on track at the same time, which will increase the number of complaints of blocking and drivers holding each other up. I don't think the current system has been developed with all the different permutations considered - what happens with red or yellow flag incidents. If the is only a 90 second window to avoid elimination then these sort of conditions will have a much larger impact on the results. The 90 second window could also become problematic on circuits where the lap is longer than that period - Spa and Singapore for example, furthermore during the elimination stage what happens when a car is on a lap which would move them out of the elimination window but the timer runs out. At the end of each qualifying session drivers can complete the lap they are on... will this carry forward into the elimination stages. The current suggestions indicate that it doesn't but I suspect that will lead to some very cross and potentially confused drivers on Saturday when this actually gets put into practice.

In other news Renault have found some paint for their car, for some bizarre reason the team elected to have yet another strange launch session where they revealed the new livery. Normally I'd complain a lot more but... WE FINALLY HAVE A YELLOW CAR!!. Yes since Jordan became Force India the grid has been sadly lacking in Yellow - Renault themselves were the last team to try a mostly yellow car in 2010 before they started targeting the Lotus name. 

This version, at least in the photos from the launch looks much better and they seem to have borrowed some of the matte finish the Red Bull guys have uncovered over the winter. Some say that the matte paint is lighter than the gloss paint used by the other teams - all I can say is that it is good that Pastor Maldonado isn't going to get his hands on this one and ruin the livery. 

Finally Red Bull have announced in the run up to the Australian GP that they are now making friends with Aston Martin - which must come to the disappointment to the people at Force India who thought they were on the cusp of a deal with the sports car manufacturer. The partnership involves a collaborative project between Aston Martin and Adrian Newey to build a new really quick car that no-one can afford - but one we all wish we could. 

So the Australian GP Weekend

Well the first race of the season has been held in Melbourne since 1996, after leaving the streets of Adelaide. In that time it has seen some interesting races and some less interesting ones. This time last season we saw that an extra year of developing the power units made them incredibly less reliable and most of the field broke down. Alonso broke down before reaching Australia and his replacement (now Renault driver in the Yellow car) broke down in the same car before the start. However testing this season has given us hope that the 2016 Australian GP will be a lot better, and will actually see more than a few cars complete the race.

The track itself if nestled in the middle of Albert park, with walls painted to look like grass lining the edge of the circuit - just to encourage the unsuspecting to crash into them. For the opening race of the season in the modern era we expect teams to be a little more tentative, especially as there more rounds in 2016 with the inclusion of Baku in June, each race means less for the overall championship. As outlined earlier qualifying will be an ultimate mystery - not just for cars working out where they rank in the pecking order but just in terms of seeing quite how the powers that be intend to implement the new rules. 

It is not too much of a surprise to assume that Mercedes will lock out the front row and vanish off into the distance - they are likely so far ahead already that they are travelling to Bahrain for round two. However the pre season testing did suggest that Ferrari have built a reasonably quick car and if one or both of the Mercedes drivers accidentally collides with the other - Vettel, and maybe even Raikkonen will be in close enough proximity to capitalise. 

The middle of the pack however looks quite close and like it was last season, will be the source of anything fun happening there are several teams which may be in the same performance bracket from Red Bull down to McLaren and Haas - with Toro Rosso, Force India, Renault and possible Sauber stuck in the middle. Manor have also made significant improvements - mostly down to actually having a car built the current regulations and with the best engine package bolted into the back. If things do get very messy and chaotic, and on a good day they may be able to pick up a point or two with Wehrlein... while Haryanto might have crashed into something.