MOTORSPORT: F1 – So many questions, so few answers

In the big picture, the question is whether wider cars with better aerodynamics and fatter tyres can produce better racing in the Formula 1 season about to start at Melbourne’s Albert Park.

In the smaller, Australian picture, the questions are: How will our F1 star, Daniel Ricciardo, handle a full season against a sensational teenage teammate? Will the Red Bull RB13 be good enough for Ricciardo to win his home Grand Prix on Sunday? And can he mount a serious challenge for the world championship in it?

Second things first. Ricciardo can cope with Max Verstappen. The 27-year-old West Australian is not only supremely talented, probably the most naturally gifted F1 driver Australia has had (even though one won three world titles and a more recent one won nine GPs), but he has the temperament and maturity of five and a half years in the sport.

These are not views formed just because Ricciardo recently became a global ambassador for carsales.com.au and motoring.com.au. The bulk of the evidence has been there since 2014, the first year of the 1.6-litre V6 hybrid cars, when he ‘destroyed’ Sebastian Vettel, the world champion of the previous four years.

Verstappen has some of the Senna super-natural, but Ricciardo is more polished at this stage. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner quite validly claims to have the best pair of drivers on the F1 grid – but he can’t give them the best car.

Pre-season testing from eight days on Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya does not bode particularly well for Red Bull this weekend at Albert Park.

Many observers dismiss pre-season testing times, but what other form guide can there be?

Ferrari looks to have made a major jump on its winless 2016 season. It was ahead of Mercedes in Barcelona. Even if the dominant team of the past three years was holding back, the danger for Red Bull is that Ferrari rather than it may now be Mercedes’ main challenger.

So if you’re wanting to bet on Ricciardo standing atop the podium on Sunday evening be sure to get generous odds. Not this year, me thinks.

For the same reasons, it’s hard to see Ricciardo – or Verstappen – as world champions this year. Logic says it will be Lewis Hamilton for a fourth time, or perhaps Vettel with Ferrari.

Ricciardo and Verstappen’s time may well come, but probably not with the combination of a Renault power unit carrying a TAG Heuer badge and an Adrian Newey chassis, as much as the latter is an aerodynamic genius.

Ricciardo would have been the best replacement for the Mercedes seat vacated by last year’s world champion Nico Rosberg, but he’s tied to Red Bull for two more seasons.

While ever these hybrids remain, certainly until at least 2020, he’s probably going to have to get a Mercedes or Ferrari power unit behind him – and with the factory team of whichever of those manufacturers.

The off-season talk has been about the wider cars, now 2.0 metres, the bigger wings back and front, more intricate sidepods, ‘shark fins’ over the engines and the 25 per cent fatter tyres – 40.5cm at the rear, 30.5cm at the front.

Lap times will be slashed by 3-5 seconds, but the worry is that overtaking will be more difficult rather than more frequent, because of the greater turbulence a car will encounter trying to pass another in front of it.

And the point has been made that this era has been about power unit dominance, rather than Newey’s aerodynamics.

Mercedes has been the runaway winner on this score, and is suspected to have unearthed as much as another 70 horsepower now that the rules have been freed up (abandoning the crazy ‘token’ system for upgrades) – perhaps taking the three-pointed star’s power unit close to 1000hp.

Clearly Ferrari has made gains too, at the command of Fiat supremo Sergio Marchionne, and Renault as well, but doubtfully anywhere near enough.

Honda, supplying only the one team, McLaren (to the three of each of the other suppliers), embarrassingly has gone backwards in terms of power and reliability with its latest configuration, now following the Mercedes approach.

Twenty years ago at Albert Park the McLarens were so dominant (with Mercedes engines) that Mika Hakkinen and David Coulthard ‘raffled’ who would win (and Coulthard infamously slowed to let Hakkinen through).

But this time the second most successful team in F1 history could have one of the sport’s greatest champions, Fernando Alonso, and his new teammate, Belgian youngster Stoffel Vandoorne, hanging off the back of the 20-car grid. Following the Manor team’s demise, perhaps only Sauber will be slower, although it has Ferrari power.

What any of the power units won’t have while ever the hybrid formula remains is enough noise for F1’s purist fans. The muffled engines will never come close to the traditional screeching ‘music’ of naturally-aspirated V8s, V10s and even 12s earlier.

This was something then Australian GP Corporation chairman Ron Walker and chief executive Andrew Westacott too bravely vowed to have changed after the 2014 Melbourne GP.

The issue remains uppermost in the minds of hard-core F1 fans, and this weekend the parochial local market is compounded by the start of the Australian Football League season, the conclusion to the new AFL Women’s competition, and the final, deciding Test match in an enthralling cricket series between Australia and India.

Westacott says ticket sales are up 10 per cent “across the board”, yet even that would not take AGPC revenues back to 2015 levels after a $5 million drop last year – to less than $35 million, against costs approaching $96 million.

F1’s new commercial masters, American media group Liberty, have talked of wanting every GP around the world to have a Super Bowl-like build-up. Having largely sidelined long-time ringmaster Bernie Ecclestone, Liberty has high hopes for more races, particularly in the US, and connection with younger audiences – and revenue streams – through new media.

It has delegated the sporting side to the widely-regarded Ross Brawn – of Ferrari, Mercedes and Benetton fame, as well as his own 2009 world title-winning team.

But whether Liberty and Brawn can achieve things Ecclestone couldn’t remains to be seen. Getting the often-required unanimous agreement necessary for lots of changes is the monstrous challenge for them.

Can they be all things to all parties – teams, circuits, the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA), media rights buyers, most importantly fans, and the most powerful stakeholder now, the manufacturers supplying the power units?

While teams want more money, or a more equitable distribution of the ‘pie’, circuits want to pay less in race fees, telecasters want more entertainment and fans want the noise back and greater excitement, the FIA and at least three of the manufacturers are wedded to an environmentally-friendlier formula that has a dwindling global audience.

In the meantime, a new season is about to start. Valtteri Bottas, a Finn without a win and only half the number of podiums of four-time GP winner Ricciardo, has filled Rosberg’s seat at Mercedes, because Ricciardo, Verstappen, Vettel and Alonso were out of bounds – for now anyway.

Cross fingers that Ferrari’s pre-season promise was for real, otherwise expect Sunday’s race to be a walk in the park for Hamilton.

And jump for joy if Ricciardo and Red Bull spring a surprise.

2017 Formula 1 line-up:

Mercedes
W08 EQ Power+
Lewis Hamilton (Great Britain) – 44
Valtteri Bottas (Finland) – 77

Red Bull
RB13 (Renault power unit)
Daniel Ricciardo (Australia) – 3
Max Verstappen (Netherlands) – 33

Ferrari
SF70H
Sebastien Vettel (Germany) – 5
Kimi Raikkonen (Finland) – 7

Force India
VJM10 (Mercedes power unit)
Sergio Perez (Mexico) – 11
Esteban Ocon (France) – 31

Williams
FW40 (Mercedes power unit)
Felipe Massa (Brazil) – 19
Lance Stroll (Canada, rookie) – 18

McLaren
MCL32 (Honda power unit)
Fernando Alonso (Spain) – 14
Stoffel Vandoorne (Belgium) – 2

Scuderia Toro Rosso
STR12 (Renault power unit)
Carlos Sainz (Spain) – 55
Daniil Kyvat (Russia) – 26

Haas
VF-17 (Ferrari power unit)
Romain Grosjean (France) – 8
Kevin Magnussen (Denmark) – 20

Renault
R.S.17
Nico Hulkenberg (Germany) – 27
Jolyon Palmer (Great Britain) – 30

Sauber
C36 (Ferrari power unit)
Marcus Ericsson (Sweden) – 9
Pascal Wehrlein (Germany) – 94