F1 - 2015

If you pay close attention you can hear it. It’s the sound of the V6 turbocharged engines that for the second season this year are powering the Formula One cars. Many critics have been directed to the lack of noise that those power units are carrying, lowering the entertainment for the supporters all over the world, but at the end of the season everybody forgot about that, while focusing on the head to head between the two Mercedes drivers in the chase for the title.

The Anglo-German team was definitely the quickest one to align to the new rules introduced for the 2014 season. It was the first team to combine successfully a completely new engine, a heavily renewed Energy Recovery System, a car completely redesigned to fit the different new components, including the bigger tank. Mercedes combined all the new elements together like no one else.

Now it’s time to challenge them. Every team had finally the chance to look for redemption, to work on the cars, which won’t sustain any critical change for this season, in order to shrink the gap from the Silver Arrows.

It looks like some team worked particularly well, at least based on the pre-season tests, with Ferrari above the others. However the first real, true test is now. Starting today and ending on Sunday, the streets of Melbourne will be the judge on the work dispensed by each team during the winter.

It’s time now to take a look at what changed from last year so that we can understand better what we’ll see on the track:

Let’s take a quick look at the TEAMS and DRIVERS: The first thing we’ll notice is that the grid will be shorter. In fact only ten team will take part in the season. Caterham is the team leaving, unable to find a buyer in time to sign for the 2015 season, with Kobayashi going back to Japan in the Super Formula and Marcus Ericsson switching to Sauber. Almost same situation, but with much better ending, was reserved to the Marussia team, looking for investment that came through just a month ago, allowing the team to show up in Australia under the name Manor. With Max Chilton moving to the FIA WEC and the tragic accident involving Jules Bianchi in Japan last year, one driver will be Will Stevens, who debuted in the top series at the end of last year, while the other car will be assigned to the DTM driver Roberto Mehri for at least the first race of the season.

A couple teams changed their engine suppliers with Lotus leaving Renault for a potentially more competitive Mercedes engine, and McLaren who is ending the glorious duet with Mercedes to join a returning name that is still associated with the team of Woking, at least in the memory of the oldest of us. Honda. Another return in the McLaren family is Fernando Alonso, who is leaving Ferrari to take the seat occupied by Kevin Magnussen last year. But not just yet. The concerns regarding Alonso’s health conditions after the crash during the last tests in Spain suggested to delay the start of the season for the Asturian driver, meaning that the young Danish driver will be on the grid on this week end in Melbourne.

Consequently to Alonso’s move, the most attended team change of the season sees Vettel leaving the Red Bull family, which is sharing with the German four titles, to seat into a Ferrari. Certainly a challenge for Sebastian, given the struggle that Ferrari found itself in for the last several seasons but the same could have been said when the previous German driver showed up at Maranello. The same driver who ended up winning 5 titles with the Cavallino.

Drivers comes, drivers, goes. So the vacant seat for Red Bull had been quickly filled by the young and fast Daniil Kvyat who stepped up from Toro Rosso. The Italian team was looking for replacement for Kvyat but also for Jean Eric Vergne, whos 2015 will be pretty busy, divided between test driving for Ferrari and competing in the Formula E with team Andretti. The decision went toward a couple of promising young drivers with a particularly fine pedigree: Carlos Sainz jr., son of the WRC idol from the ’90, and Max Verstappen, son of Jos, Formula One driver himself until the early 2000.

Joining the club of who’s leaving F1 for this year, are the two now former Sauber drivers Gutierrez and Sutil, replaced by Ericsson, as said before, and the fast Felipe Nasr, moving up from GP2. There’s actually a third driver who should take part in the Australian Gran Prix. Giedo Van Der Garde signed a contract last year to take part into the 2015 season driving a Sauber and the Swiss team has now and order from Court to provide a car for Van Der Garde this week end. Three drivers for two cars, that’s probably not the best way to start a season, since as we write, there’s no certainty on who expect on the grid on Sunday!

Taking a look at the calendar we notice that we have one more race for a total of 20. The new entry is actually not new but is a big come back. The Mexican Gran Prix will be held at the same location that saw the F1 circus and supporters gather the last time on 1992.

Beside that not much has changed since the races ready to enter or re-enter the calendar weren’t meeting the requirements. That means no New Jersey, no India, no Korea.

The only other situation to be solved concerns the German Gran Prix. This should be the year, according to the agreement, to see F1 at the Nurburgring but nothing has been officialised so it will be either that or Hockenheim.

Now, for the most nerd of us, let’s take a look at the main changes in terms of SPECIFICATIONS and REGULATIONS: The number of power units available per car during the season has dropped from 5 to 4. Following such restriction there won’t be any penalty for the replacement of the whole power unit while penalties remain in effect for the substitution on parts of it.

The development of the engines has been cut by half for this season, leaving even less room for improvement for whoever is struggling….

The Front-and-Rear Interconnected suspensions have been banned.

On the safety side, following the brutal accident occurred to Bianchi in Japan, the cockpits have to be reinforced to give more protection around the head area, the starting time for several races has been anticipated in order to avoid racing close to dusk and a new procedure called Virtual Safety Car has been introduced to be used in sudden risky situation not manageable by the actual safety car.

A new 10 seconds penalty in the pit has been introduced to sanction unsafe releases and the double points assigned in the last race have been abandoned (TG!)

In case of race suspension, the cars will line up in the pit lane instead of the starting grid.

….And now the best of all! The drivers are banned from changing their helmets design!!!! The council of F1, after a long and solemn evaluation, declared that changing helmet design may cause trouble for the fans to recognize the drivers….Thanks chiefs, always thinking about us! Just in case the cars and numbers they are driving wasn’t enough to identify them…Now we’ll actually know who’s behind the wheel, just in case they switch cars right before the start. AMAZING