MOTORSPORT: Lifting the lid on 2018 F1 season

The first of the Formula 1 cars with the ‘halo’ head protection for the world championship starting in five weeks have begun to appear, while it’s hats off to carsales.com.au global ambassador Daniel Ricciardo for his helmet design for this season.

Red Bull Racing driver Ricciardo has opted for a heavily Aussie-themed look to his helmet, with carsales.com.au front and centre.

American team Haas was the first to show its 2018 car, the Ferrari-engined VF-18, with veteran British team Williams next with its Mercedes-powered FW41.

Red Bull is due to unveil Adrian Newey’s latest creation for Ricciardo and Max Verstappen – the RB14 with Renault’s hybrid powerplant – on Monday night.

The new Mercedes and Ferrari are to come on Thursday and the McLaren, Renault-powered this year, on Friday.

Mercedes technical chief James Allison has explained the approach the world champion team has taken with the ‘halo’.

The governing Federation Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) has already flagged that it wants to reduce the thickness of the ‘halo’ and improve the look next year.

FIA safety delegate Laurent Mekies has said: “We have two main objectives – one is the central strut, to see if we can have a reduction in thickness for visibility purposes, and secondly a better integration in the car, i.e. better aesthetics ultimately.”

Two four-day tests for all 10 of this year’s F1 teams will be held at Barcelona’s grand prix circuit between February 26 and March 9, with the first race at Melbourne’s Albert Park street circuit on the last weekend of next month.

Gene Haas has challenged his third-year team to get within half a second a lap of Ferrari this year. While the technical regulations are little different this season apart from the addition of the ‘halo’, Haas team principal Gunther Steiner says that has meant a higher centre of gravity for the cars and required chassis modifications to handle the extra weight loads.

“We were able to do a better job of putting the weight where we wanted it,” Steiner said.

The new Williams is the first under the leadership of former Mercedes factory team technical director Paddy Lowe, with the most noticeable changes from last year’s model being to the sidepods and barge boards, and a T-wing at the base of the shortened engine cover.

Williams will have the least experienced driver line-up in the field – 22-year-old Russian rookie Sergey Sirotkin and 19-year-old Canadian Lance Stroll, entering his second season. However, Robert Kubica – the 33-year-old Polish driver who won a GP a decade ago before a terrible rallying accident that has permanently damaged one of his hands – is the new Williams test and development driver and will be on track in the Barcelona testing as well as in at least three Friday practice sessions during the year.

Different approach to head protection in America
The curved and sometimes steep banking of America’s ovals means the ‘halo’ is not suitable for open-wheeler speedway racing, so IndyCar is trialling a bigger windscreen.

It’s rather like the ‘shield’ Red Bull had proposed for F1 and, despite suggestions of differences of opinion, IndyCar and the FIA are collaborating closely on the screen.

New Zealander Scott Dixon, a four-time IndyCar series champion with Chip Ganassi Racing, tried the enlarged screen during daylight, at dusk and at night at speeds up around 300km/h during a recent test at the one-mile (1.6-kilometre) oval with banking up to 11 degrees at Phoenix, Arizona.

Dixon reported a minor visibility problem looking through the screen – which is thickened to four-tenths of an inch (10.2 millimetres) and weighs 14 pounds (6.35 kilograms) – and said extra cockpit cooling was needed.

IndyCar competition chief Jay Frye says no timeframe had been decided for introduction of the screen.

“We have things to look at like the best way to fix it to the car and get the shape exactly right,” Frye said.

Australia’s Will Power was second fastest at the Phoenix test to last year’s Indianapolis 500 victor, Takuma Sato.

Power, still with Team Penske for which he won the 2014 IndyCar title, wants the series organisers to allow the same boost levels on ovals as at road and street courses.

IndyCar’s BorgWarner turbochargers run at 1.3-bar (130kPa) on superspeedways, 1.4-bar on short ovals (and Indy 500 qualifying) and 1.5-bar on road and street courses – with 1.65-bar as the push-to-pass ‘overboost’.