To return to the animal analogy, think of the 1.6 litre V6s as slightly
slimmed down lions which can go much longer without a meal. The relative
power, efficiency and cooling of the Ferrari, Mercedes and Renault engines
should all come into play.
All this adds up to the teams arriving in Jerez with less of a clue about how
the season is likely to unfold than at any time in recent history. How
efficiently will their engine run? Are they down on power? Have they missed
a trick in their interpretation of the new aerodynamic rules? All of these
questions will be vexing designers and engineers over the coming days, weeks
and months.
Of course, it is hard to imagine that the big teams – Mercedes, Red Bull,
Ferrari and McLaren, and possibly Lotus once they start testing in Bahrain
and can overcome their financial hurdles – will not be somewhere near the
front. They have the biggest budgets and manpower in the sport.
But the possibility of a mixed up grid, you would have to say, is more likely
than at any time in recent seasons.
At first, therefore, there is no escaping the fact that as a spectator sport
Formula One could be mightily confusing. Understanding the mixture of
different tyre strategies and fuel strategies is not going to be easy to
follow.
As Jenson Button said on the launch of McLaren’s MP4-29 last week: “There
going to be a lot of power management and fuel management.
“It’s going to be complicated for the viewer and I hope there is something
on the TV to help them – how much battery power we’ve used, how much fuel
we’ve used. The viewer needs this, because information is the key to
everything. It’s going to make the racing this year.”
The broadcasters, Sky and the BBC, are thought to be working with Formula One
Management to come up with some clever graphics to show all this
information, and without this the sport could be a minefield to follow.
As someone put it to me on Twitter recently: “How am I supposed to watch
a sport when you need an app to follow all the pit stops?” I’m afraid
you might need two apps for the start of this season.
But all this potential confusion aside, uncertainty is good for Formula One.
After four years of Red Bull hegemony, dramatic rule change should help to
mix things up a bit.
Formula One will most likely leave Jerez on Friday evening still without a
clear idea of who is quick and who is not: that it the nature of testing and
we will have to wait until qualifying in Melbourne for a fuller picture. But
at least we will have heard a different kind of lion roar.