Changes tend to happen slowly in Formula 1’s modern era. Development is constant throughout the field, so making great leaps forward, consequently, is challenging. It’s difficult to imagine any major changes to the 2019 F1 standings from what the racing world saw in 2018. Stepping back and looking at F1 in the hybrid turbo era (beginning with the 2014 season), there have been 100 Grands Prix. Dominant Mercedes has won 74 of them for a nearly 75 percent success record. The Mercedes run is mightily impressive, and it’s increased the team’s all-time total in the series to 87 wins. Ferrari tops the list with 235. In the same five-year period, Ferrari has won 14 races, and Red Bull Racing has captured 12. No other team has won a Grand Prix in the past five years. In fact, in the last 54 races, only two drivers outside the Big Three teams have managed to get on the podium: Lance Stroll in Baku in 2017 and Sergio Perez at the same venue in 2018. That does not mean F1 is not interesting and exciting; it simply means it’s a slugfest between three heavyweights.
With Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton chasing a sixth F1 championship and teammate Valtteri Bottas doing his utmost to avoid losing his ride to reserve driver Esteban Ocon, the team is not lacking motivation this year. There is always the danger of complacency, but team boss Toto Wolff does not believe that will affect the Brackley, England-based squad. “I don’t think complacency was ever a factor within our team,” Wolff said. “The group is very motivated, and we set objectives together that we are passionate about. It is more about how can you maintain those levels of energy. “Sometimes a level of energy can become unhealthy, and that is an area that we are putting a lot of effort into.” But the numbers don’t always tell the whole story because, at least through the first half of the 2018 season, it looked like Ferrari could topple Mercedes. The big talking point in the 2019 preseason is whether Red Bull Racing can maintain its third-place position in the pecking order following its switch to Honda engines. The team made this decision for both technical and strategic reasons.
When Red Bull was a Renault customer, it fought against a Renault factory team, an uncomfortable situation for all concerned. Becoming Honda’s No. 1 team was a much better choice. But Red Bull officials insist the decision was made based on the engineering. Team principal Christian Horner says it was “pretty clear-cut in the end. “We’ve been in a privileged position to have a front row seat to monitor the progress of how Honda have been getting on in our sister team at Toro Rosso versus our own power supply,” Horner said. “We’ve come to the conclusion that Honda are making good strides, good progress on both performance and reliability, and therefore we have made the difficult decision to change power units. “Our determination as a team is to keep closing the gap to our immediate competitors. We’re confident that Honda have the right infrastructure, the right resources, the right technical capacity and determination to help us in our decision.” The other great imponderable is whether Ferrari maintains its competitiveness following yet another political upheaval: Overthrowing team principal Maurizio Arrivabene in favor of technical boss Mattia Binotto. And can four-time F1 champion Sebastian Vettel find his mojo again and stop making mistakes? Or is the young charger Charles Leclerc’s arrival from Sauber going to destabilize Vettel further?
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