I'm excited. At least for the first couple of races.

Honda needs to deliver.
Ferrari needs to deliver.
Rosberg needs to run Hamilton off the track brutally to establish some dominance.

 

Manor have announced Rio Haryanto as their second driver. Rumours were circulating that the second seat might be shared between Haryanto, who brings backing from the Malaysian government, Alex Rossi and Will Stephens, who occupied the seat fairly anonymously last season. Neither Rossi nor Stephens could bring much in the way of money, so the announcement doesn't really come as much of a surprise.

So the driver lineups have been fixed, and all that remains is for the cars to be revealed, with the Ferrari breaking cover tomorrow, and most of the others having low-key unveilings in the pit lane at Barcelona when the first pre-season test begins on Monday. Sky F1 will be showing evening updates throughout both tests.

In other news, rumours abound that Honda are having reliability issues...

 

Several 2016 cars have been now been unveiled, and to the surprise of precisely nobody, they are all completely indistinguishable from their 2015 predecessors. Although the Ferrari has a bit more white on it. We won't see anything new until next season, assuming that there can be some sort of agreement on the rules, which doesn't look likely to happen any time soon.

Haas has been the latest team to break cover, their paint job bearing more than a passing resemblance to that of McLarens past. Testing gets underway tomorrow, with only Sauber not revealing their car until the second test which starts on 1 March. This week's test will be all about reliability and giving new drivers a chance to accustom themselves to their new cars, and for some, new teams.

There will, of course, be the occasional low-fuel lap just to see what's possible, and to keep the sponsors happy. I'm not sure whether Pirelli will be trying out the new Ultra Soft tyre - although this won't be introduced as an option for race use until Monaco, it will be interesting to see how it performs against the Super Soft. Teams have increased tyre options available this season, as follows:

"The two mandatory sets chosen by Pirelli can be of two different compounds, from the three that have been nominated for the race weekend. These sets will obviously be identical for each team.
The remaining 10 sets can be chosen by each team, from the three compounds nominated for the race weekend.
The teams will make their choices within a deadline set by Pirelli. They will communicate their choices to the FIA, which will in turn tell Pirelli how many tyres to produce. The choices for each car will remain secret until 2 weeks before the race. If a team does not meet the deadline, the choice will be made by the FIA.
Once the choices for each car have been made, the FIA will continue to assign the tyres randomly via a barcode, as is the case currently.
The choices made by each team can vary for each of its cars: so each driver within a team can have a different allocation".

Daily updates will be available on Sky F1 at 9pm on every evening during the two tests.

 

If Ferrari did what they said the would do, which is not to run the car on full power early in test and practice sessions, then we might have an exciting season ahead of us.
They might actually be able to bring the fight to Mercedes.

And Ted gave some fairly alarming info on Honda.
They obviously didn't have the pace today but at least they were racking up some miles.
Apparently this is a Mk.1 of their 2016 engine, they will bring another revision of their engine for the second test next week, and then their Melbourne-spec engine will be another revision again, produced from the information gathered from the two pre-season tests.
Not very confidence-inspiring when Melbourne is only a month away.

 

At this stage it's far too early to draw any conclusions. Lewis Hamilton put in far more laps than anyone else, and typically Mercedes will have been concentrating on reliability. The Ferrari appears to have some pace, the McLaren put in a good few laps, albeit 2.5 - 3 seconds off the pace.

These tests provide some pointers as to who's quick and who isn't, but the true relative pace of the cars won'e become apparent until qualifying at Melbourne. I'm hoping that the pack has closed on Mercedes, and we can have a few other drivers with a chance of winning.

 

BCE talking down the sport, again, looking to buy it back, again, on the cheap, again?

http://autoweek.com/article/formula-..._medium=social

 

So long as Lewis wins again, and McLaren do much better and we see JB and Alonso racing again I'll be a happy chap. I'd like to see Renault do better as well, as I want to see Magnussen & Palmer progress in the sport.

 

Honda has sacked Arai after the first day of testing!

 

Correction.
Honda has sacked Arai after one year of poor results and shocking reliability

 

Fair enough