The 2020 F1 season will be launched on RDS and RDS Direct this weekend with the Austrian Grand Prix. Qualifications will be presented at 8:45 a.m. Saturday and the race at 8:30 a.m.
PARIS, France – With initially 22 races, the 2020 Formula 1 season, which begins Sunday in Austria, was to be a record lift, but that was before the coronavirus, to which we owe a reduced but denser calendar which should make reliability and key regularity.
As the drivers prepare to return to the track for the first time since the winter tests in Barcelona in late February, eight races are confirmed in Europe between July and September, but F1 hopes 15 to 18 by the end of the season in Abu Dhabi in mid-December.
If no stable reveals its entirety before the first qualifications, these tests did not let glimpse the end of the supremacy of Mercedes, six-time defending champion drivers and manufacturers with its figurehead Lewis Hamilton.
The Silver Arrows completed the greatest number of laps, signed the best lap time and made a strong psychological impact by introducing a revolutionary system, the “DAS” (dual axis steering), which allows the pilot to modify the spacing of the front wheels of his car according to his needs by pulling or pushing his steering wheel.
It is too early to measure the benefits, but, as Renault’s Renault Daniel Ricciardo noted, “Mercedes is always the one to compete, not the other way around.”
And technical director James Allison has warned: his team will take to the track this weekend with a series of changes.
Ferrari’s side, the only one not to have beaten its 2019 times in Spain, “we are not favorite and we know it”, reminded the contrary Monaco driver Charles Leclerc at the end of April.
” New challenges “
With fewer Grands Prix but shorter races, can this be denied?
“This calendar and the coronavirus present us with new challenges,” admitted Mercedes boss Toto Wolff at the beginning of June, for whom “reliability will be fundamental during the first races”.
Closed during the confinement period in Europe, the stables have had little time since to learn more or work on their cars, recalls the Austrian.
“A reduced schedule will therefore be a challenge for everyone and I think it is the team with the fastest and most reliable car that will win the championship,” he predicts.
Former pilot Jean Alesi delivers a close analysis. “I think what is going to be important, more than performance, is reliability,” said the Frenchman to AFP.
“In general, when the teams have technical problems, they have the possibility of reacting between two races,” he explains. However, to make up for the delay accumulated since March, the GPs will follow one another at a more sustained pace and “it will be very penalizing if there are reliability problems”.
“Make no mistake”
“With fewer races, you have to focus on making no mistakes,” adds Haas’ main team, Guenther Steiner. “Because every mistake counts more if you have fewer opportunities to catch up. “
Additional difficulty, to limit the risks associated with coronavirus, in garages as elsewhere, it will be necessary to observe a physical distance, which inevitably lengthens the slightest change of room.
The pilots are therefore warned: runway excursions and other clashes will be potentially more costly than usual.
For them, it is a double challenge ahead: to be immediately operational after a longer off-season and to hold over time despite a denser schedule.
Nothing to worry about, however, Alesi, who highlights the youth and freshness of these men and their millimeter training.
The first two consecutive GPs on the Red Bull Ring in Spielberg, in any case, are an interesting test. With a third and fifth place in 2019 and a – rare – double retirement in 2018, Mercedes is not there at best, unlike the Dutch Red Bull Max Verstappen, aspiring world champion, who remains on two successes.
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