Motor Verso F1 2018 Season Summary

Photo: Octane Photography

As mentioned a few days ago the F1 Grand Prix race reviews that I contribute to motoring website Motor Verso will have a slightly different format this year.

They will all be collated in a single 2018 F1 summary article, which we'll add to race by race, to give us a grand review of the season by the year's end!

And since I flagged the article a few days ago we've added a few more details, such as an explanation of main changes since 2017 as well as video explanations of the halo and how Sebastian Vettel got ahead of Lewis Hamilton in the Australian Grand Prix.

You can check it all out here: https://www.motorverso.com/2018-f1-summary/

New Motorsport Week article: Virtual Reality - why the Australian GP's Virtual Safety Car was fair enough

Photo: Octane Photography

F1 rumpuses can often blindside you. The Australian Grand Prix last weekend seemed straightforward enough. Albeit was tilted by a Virtual Safety Car appearance letting the man in a net third place vault to the win by losing less time in his pitstop as a consequence.

But some thought it not so straightforward. There was grumbling about the Virtual Safety Car's impact. That it was the latest example of F1 being farcical.

In my latest for Motorsport Week I outline however why it was, mostly, fair enough. Or at least no great surprise.

You can have a read of my thinking here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/17505

Inside Line F1 Podcast - Mercedes' Party Mode Could Spoil The 2018 F1 Party

Is Mercedes' mystical 'party mode' a myth? Well, for Formula 1's sake, let's hope so. However, full marks to Mercedes for scaring the living day lights out of the competition in qualifying, although that lap has to be attributed more to Lewis Hamilton's talent than the Mercedes package. If the 'party mode' is for real then it will end up ruining the 2018 party for all of us.

In this week's episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast, Mithila and Kunal pick the best moments from the 2018 Australian Grand Prix, wonder why Formula 1 didn't test when the teams did and why Max Verstappen's assessment of the race isn't accurate. Also, we have a special guest on our show - tune in!

(Season 2018, Episode 9)

Subscribe to the Inside Line F1 Podcast on iTunes and audioBoom for your weekly dose of Formula 1 humour

Australian Grand Prix review for Motor Verso - Death of a party

Photo: Octane Photography

You may be aware that I write race reviews of every F1 Grand Prix for motoring website Motor Verso. This year we have a different format for them. They will all be collated in a single 2018 F1 summary article, which we'll add to race by race, to give us a grand review of the season come the year's end!

The first of these was now been published. It features my take on the 2018 pre-season expectations and further down my thoughts on yesterday's Australian GP, and Sebastian Vettel's surprise leapfrogging of Lewis Hamilton. Virtual Safety Car and all.

Here's the link: https://www.motorverso.com/2018-f1-summary/

Do check out the Motor Verso site too; you'll find motoring news, car reviews and features - the team on the site carry out week-long test drives of the latest cars - as well as photos and videos of the machines.

Australian GP Report - Who's smiling now?

For all that much is new in contemporary F1, the pecking order in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne's Albert Park looked terribly familiar. The grand reveal of the first qualifying session confirmed the efficacy of the pre-season testing grapevine. We had a tight midfield with Haas heading it. Ferrari and Red Bull close to each other. Mercedes well clear. There was a hiccup - Valtteri Bottas binned it in qualifying and started 15th. Yet Lewis Hamilton stunned all with his final effort and was nine tenths clear on pole.

Sebastian Vettel took a surprise Australian Grand Prix
win, and smiles were reversed
Photo: Octane Photography

There was much talk of a special Mercedes 'party mode' for the last of quali, denied by all in the silver camp. And when jibed by his rival Sebastian Vettel on the subject Lewis retorted that his late boost instead was the desire to "wipe the smile off your face".

"I think what goes around comes around," Seb rejoined. "He's free to have a party tonight and then hopefully Kimi [Raikkonen] and myself will have a party tomorrow."

It seems he's as good a mystic as racing driver.

Come the race things initially were in a similar vein to qualifying however. Lewis didn't run away from the Ferrari pair next up but looked undeniably comfortable. As for Vettel, he wasn't even the fastest Ferrari as Kimi set the Scuderia pace. In that familiar way it was all rather follow my leader too.

Australian GP Betting Preview - Early birds

You know what they say about the early bird. It applies to F1 betting. As this point before the season actually starts is unique; only now do none of us really know who among the season's cars and drivers is actually quick and not quick when it matters. And this gives opportunities.

There are opportunities for the F1
gambler prior to the first race
Photo: Octane Photography

The pre-season testing consensus was that the 'big three' of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull are close, more so than we've got used to. But equally there was a sense from testing that Merc remains out front. Plus in this hybrid era there's been little money to be made from backing anyone else - four championship doubles from four; 63 race wins from 79...

Lewis Hamilton therefore is the unimaginative bet for 2018 but also likely the safest one, and you can near enough double your money on a Hamilton title by backing him at 5/6.

Nevertheless if Red Bull is indeed starting a season strongly for once then the 8/1 available for Max Verstappen to win this year's championship looks pretty good medium range value.

Inside Line F1 Podcast - F1 Under Pressure From IndyCar, MotoGP & Formula E

The classic racing in IndyCar, MotoGP and Formula E in the last week has ensured a dream start to the Motorsport season of 2018. Will Formula 1 enthral us at the season-opening 2018 Australian Grand Prix with a multi-driver battle for victory, or will we be subjected to another race (or season!) of dominance from Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton? Whatever it may be, the pressure is on Formula 1 to match up to the level of excitement and racing action the other series are able to offer.

In this week's episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast, Mithila and Kunal wonder if the drivers of the future will be expected to perform more duties than just racing. And of course, the marketers in them discuss Formula 1's first-ever global media campaign with keen interest. There's a lot more than Formula 1 could do within their 'Engineering Insanity' video.

After coining the term 'Return on Penalties' last week, this week, they discuss the 'Battle of the Renaults' and the new driver rivalries it could throw up. And there's a new feature that we plan to introduce - 'What Toto Said This Week!'

Finally, predictions for the first race of the season are the hardest, but they give it their best shot. Let's hope the season isn't as boring as their predictions are though. Tune in!

(Season 2018, Episode 8)

Subscribe to the Inside Line F1 Podcast on iTunes and audioBoom for your weekly dose of Formula humour

Enter the Vital F1 Prediction competition - and pit your wits against me

You may know that one of the websites I write for is VitalF1.com. It has plenty on it for F1 fans - news, a discussion forum and comment articles among other things.

Photo: Octane Photography

And it has a F1 prediction competition, back for the new season, that you can enter.

For every Grand Prix you pick two drivers to score points for you depending on where they finish in real life. In some races it's the relatively straightforward matter of predicting who'll finish first and second, but in others it gets more tricky as you have to try to predict who'll finish in a precise positions further down the order, such as P5 and P6...

It's all free too.

If you'd like to sign up, or find out more, here is the link: http://www.vitalf1.com/article.asp?a=4253

And if it helps encourage you to take part you'll get to pit your wits against me, as I'll be taking part in the game too (as 'Talking about F1', obviously).

Hope you're able to take part. It's good fun.

Talking about F1 - a few tweaks for 2018

It feels very strange that this year Talking about F1 will celebrate its eighth birthday. Time has flown, which must mean I've been having fun. But then again why would getting a pulpit to opine on a sport that I've had a passion for from an early age be anything other than fun?

A bad selfie by some old guy.

Yet the site has also been good for aiding my own development as a writer and (stop laughing at the back) journalist; as well as writing for other sites I've had the privilege of attending a number of F1 races as an accredited journalist. And in the last 12 months things have moved up a gear or two.

You may know that in this time I've been part of the Autosport Academy, doing various things for Autosport and Motorsport News. This includes reporting from paddocks for various UK national events, and I aim to do more of the same again this year.

It has been a great experience, and an invaluable opportunity to work with fantastic people and to develop my journalistic skills which - given F1 is peculiar in many ways - is not so easy to do in an F1 paddock.

But the flipside of me covering national events is that it will occupy me on many F1 weekends, so I will have to tweak my F1 output on this site.

I still intend before each Grand Prix to produce a preview article on the Monday and a betting preview on the Wednesday as usual.

I also intend to still produce Grand Prix race reports though these will likely be available a little later than before, sometime on the Monday after each race most likely.

And with regret I won't be able to write qualifying reports this year, as I doubt there will be much opportunity in a lot of weekends to produce this in time. Obviously I can cover any momentous qualifying moments in the race report, particularly those that impact the race.

Thanks as ever for all of your support and kind words over time, I hope that you continue to enjoy the site as much as I enjoy writing on it.

If you have any queries or comments then please let me know in the comments or else drop me a line at gkeilloh@hotmail.co.uk.

Regards,
Graham Keilloh

Melbourne Preview: Fount of knowledge

"Nobody knows anything". So goes William Goldman's celebrated line on Hollywood.

There is always tension around the opening round
Photo: Octane Photography

And although F1 has in recent times has given a good impression of one whose results can be called well in advance, it applies to that too. No matter what else happens the first season's gathering, and particularly the first qualifying session, always will have the paddock on tenterhooks.

As it is a confirmation. Talk is replaced by numbers on a stopwatch which are hard to deny. After however many weeks and months of work, clues and no little speculation, this impending season-opening weekend around Melbourne's Albert Park is the latest F1 equivalent of getting your exam results. And despite the attempts to give an impression otherwise, no one really knows what will happen.

As is expected between seasons with no great regulation shift pre-season testing just passed in Barcelona suggested no grand reshuffle in the competitive order since 2017. Yet it offered points of intrigue, not least the prospect of a tighter battle between the 'big three' teams.

Talking about F1 2018 Team-by-Team Season Preview

Now with the season-opening Australian Grand Prix almost upon us there are plenty of F1 season previews around. And Talking about F1 is not one to be left out. You will have noticed that over the last week or so I have written a preview for all ten competing F1 teams in 2018 and their drivers.

All of the previews are now collated in one place - by clicking on the '2018 Team and Driver Guide' tab above you can explore my view on the prospects of every driver and team on this season's grid.

New Motorsport Week article: Thirty years on - the McLaren MP4/4 delivers F1’s most devastating blow

By Instituto Ayrton Senna derivative work: Karpouzi
[CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)],
via Wikimedia Commons

We are almost exactly 30 years on to the day from likely F1's most devastating single blow ever being delivered.

23 March 1988 was the date that the McLaren Honda MP4/4 debuted on-track. The very last day of pre-season testing, just nine days before opening practice of the first round. And the blow was as devastating as it was late and sudden. The car was immediately far quicker than all rivals that had been pounding around all winter.

We know what happened next - 15 Grand Prix wins out of 16 for Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost that year. But up until that later than late on-track bow there was nothing inevitable about it; for the MP4/4 things could very easily have been very different.

In my latest for Motorsport Week I tell the story. You can have a read here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/17296

F1 2018 Season Preview: Sauber - Playing catch up

Things could always be worse, as the saying goes. All at Sauber know this. They experienced it.

Photo: Octane Photography

In recent times the team existed in financial turmoil and for years. Its car for each season was essentially a rehash of the preceding one. Many staff left and, to be blunt, hearing confirmation of the team going out of business seemed a matter of when not whether.

Yet it was at last rescued in mid-2016 when Longbow Finance took over. As is often the way with such things a shake-up followed. Team principal Monisha Kaltenborn left mid last season and the highly-rated Frederic Vasseur arrived eventually in her stead. Earlier in the year Jorg Zander came in to head up the technical side after a long spell away.

As is also the way of such things the legacy of the under-investment will linger a while. Zander found a team not only rather husk-like after years of survival mode, it also was somewhat in disarray.

F1 2018 Season Preview: McLaren - I am curious, orange

We thought it so simple. Ditch the dread Honda power unit for anything else you could find and it would all be rosy. Yet with McLaren for the nth season in a row we enter a F1 season with more questions around than answers.

Photo: Octane Photography

Pre-season testing provided evidence of what some had suspected over the last three trying seasons - that far from all of McLaren's problems had been Honda ones. The now Renault-powered car completed the fewest laps of all in Barcelona; running forever was interrupted by a variety of technical problems. Some by the team's admission were mere finger trouble. A wheel falling off the car in testing's early throes provided an unwelcome visual metaphor.

It is said the car is ultra complicated under the skin, and the implications included that problems take a long time to resolve - for example an engine change is reckoned to take at best three hours rather than the standard sub-two. Pitstop practices in Barcelona were chaotic.

A few wondered also why McLaren, almost alone, used the softest tyre compounds as a default. McLaren racing director Eric Boullier insisted there were "technical reasons" and there wasn't much pace difference between the compounds in any case. On the hyper-softs McLaren set a late and low laptime. It didn't convince too many though.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Haas - Surprise surprise

Whatever else can be said about F1, it never loses its capacity to surprise.

Photo: Octane Photography

Take Haas. In pre-season's first few days the team hardly was mentioned. Apparent nondescript plodders in a congested midfield, and perhaps somewhere near the ceiling of its buy-in-and-outsource-everything-you-can model. Sauber's closer ties with Ferrari likely wasn't good news for it either. There was little visually in the car launched to make you reassess, beyond that it contained a clear Ferrari influence. But it was far from alone on that.

Yet we'll go to Melbourne almost expecting Haas to be best of the rest behind the big three teams, certainly in the mix with the likes of Renault and McLaren; well capable of points and perhaps big hauls of them. Somehow the car appears to work. Towards the end of Barcelona running it was setting laptimes mere tenths off the Ferrari and the fuel loads were understood to be similar.

Its long runs were in the right ballpark and the car passes the visual test of looking to be handling well on circuit. Only McLaren and Sauber - both of whom had conspicuous room to improve - made a bigger gain in its best time compared with 2017's testing. And for what it's worth with the Pirelli compound delta applied to each test's best lap Haas suddenly was top...

F1 2018 Season Preview: Toro Rosso - International relations

It goes to show that in this game should never make your mind up irrecoverably. Before testing we didn't expect much of Toro Rosso this year beyond struggle. Due not least to it being left holding the Honda power unit when the music stopped.

Photo: Octane Photography

Two weeks of testing later and things look a little different. Toro Rosso with the supposedly ultra unreliable Japanese unit in fact topped the mileage charts in testing's first week. And while accepting the weather disruption made that part slightly odd, even at the end of testing overall only the much better resourced Mercedes and Ferrari out-ran it. There was only one (minor) Honda failure that anyone was aware of. Honda indeed near enough doubled the pre-season mileage it got 12 months ago.

In a more broad sense some yet hold out hope of the Honda unit's ultimate potential. The resources are there of course, as presumably is its commitment given it's still around post McLaren's ditching.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Renault - Yellow fever

This year we are expecting a high climber. A former champion team. One that will stride forward after years of lingering doldrums.

Photo: Octane Photography

However it may not be the high climber that everyone had been anticipating before testing started. Rather than McLaren's papaya, the evidence of 2018's early shadow boxing was that we may instead need to look to Renault's yellow.

It shouldn't have been that much of a surprise though, as the aims at Renault are big. Of course it is a works effort, one that as mentioned has championship pedigree. It is rearming after what it calls almost a decade of under-investment, and staff numbers have grown from 470 to 750 since 2015 when Renault took back over the Enstone collective. Team principal Cyril Abiteboul has said he wants Renault ultimately to win titles, and at 85% of the size of its main rivals.

Inside Line F1 Podcast - Key Questions Ahead Of The 2018 F1 Season

Yes, the 2018 Australian Grand Prix is less than a fortnight away. In this week's episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast, we ask some key questions that will be answered through the 2018 Formula 1 Season.

Apart from the usual questions around Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull Racing, we ask if Kimi Raikkonen knows the cost of a litre of vodka. Where will McLaren be in 2018? Hopefully not at the Honda HQs in Japan! Btw, we totally believe that for McLaren to be a force to reckon with in Formula 1, they should build their own engines.

Also, we wonder if the art of rolling restarts will be lost to drivers and Formula 1 and if Renault is explaining their drivers and customer teams the 'returns on penalty' equation as they prepare to use four power units this season. Tune in!

PS: Like McLaren, we are facing some pre-season testing issues with our new recording system. We promise to be back to perfect sound (ceramic microphones, of course) by next week's episode!

(Season 2018, Episode 6)

Subscribe to the Inside Line F1 Podcast on iTunes and audioBoom for your weekly dose of Formula 1 humour

F1 2018 Season Preview: Williams - In the balance

We talk a lot about the Williams decline. We used to think of the team a little as we do Mercedes now - bound to get it right and run at the front, whatever else happens.

Photo: Octane Photography

But the Williams decline can be traced back a long time, all the way to 1997. And in the last decade and a bit it's been mainly midfield flailing. Was the upturn with the Mercedes engine in 2014 a dead cat bounce? Since, in results at least, it's been in a state of downward drift.

Its heritage is a burden in a more tangible sense. Williams retains the infrastructure of a large team, but these days is without the money to make it work. Instead it is being usurped by Force India which has a streamlined model, with plenty outsourced, that gets much better results at that level.

The latest staging post of the Williams decline in the popular consciousness is its driver selection for 2018. The team that once lost prize Honda engines by refusing to take on a Japanese sop now has two pilots whose cases owe at least something - many think a lot - to the money they bring.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Force India - Changing context

Force India's predicament says a few things about life. That all things are relative. That no man (or F1 team) is an island entirely of itself. That all is judged in its zeitgeist.

Photo: Octane Photography

Force India is by consensus F1's best team pound for pound (which works on a metaphorical weight and a literal money level). It allies a strong power unit and gearbox with an almost as strong driver line up, sound development and sensible race strategies. A slimmed down operation that makes the best of what it has.

These days it gets plenty of respect to go with its comfortable fourth place in the constructors' standings last year - a particularly towering achievement given it came after a big rule change that often catches the smaller teams out. But even so Force India's expected to fall in 2018.

All to do with the sort of phenomena outlined at the outset. Renault, rearming itself as a works squad, is expected to improve. McLaren, having shed its dread Honda, is expected to improve. The assumption is that both will clear Force India in 2018. Without Force India especially doing anything wrong.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Red Bull - The Bulls are back in town?

"I think there's three quick teams and there's no doubt that Red Bull are going to be people that we're going to be fighting with this year," Mercedes' technical head James Allison told TV during the second test. "There's clearly no doubt about that.

Photo: Octane Photography

"Looking at what they've brought here, I'd say they've still got some bodywork to bolt on before Melbourne."

Yes, whatever else has been going on pre-season Red Bull has been the talk of the town.

Yes, we've been waiting a while for Red Bull to step up and deliver a proper season-long fight for the championship between it, Mercedes and Ferrari. Yes, Red Bull for a number of years has been disappointing us in season starts, by falling from the competitiveness it had ended the previous season with.

Last year at this point the Red Bull was conspicuously bare and started off the pace in Melbourne, though the team had the mitigation of windtunnel correlation problems. True to form it clawed its way back as the year progressed and for a time in the autumn looked even the consistent pace-setter.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Ferrari - One more push?

Ferrari against most predictions made a championship of it last year. From nowhere it stepped up to be almost with the Mercedes on pace - perhaps actually with it or even ahead by some estimates. And not through chance.

Photo: Octane Photography

As Mark Hughes noted of the Ferrari, "it was the most bold and ingenious design on the grid, with more innovations, more nudging against the limits of the regulations, than any other car. That was the first time this could be said of a Ferrari in more than a decade."

The Ferrari didn't have the peaks of the Merc but it was far more adaptable and usable. Its engine was in the ballpark too, certainly come the race. In that most sincere form of flattery plenty of rivals have in their 2018 machines followed the lead of last year's red car.

With a few cards falling the other way Ferrari could have bagged the drivers' title. Over and above its much mooted mid-to-late season unreliability, we had safety cars appearances going against it in China and Spain - either costing Sebastian Vettel probable wins - as well as Seb's errors in Baku and Singapore letting two more victories go from its grasp.

Verstappen Needs Fast Start To Compete, by Andy Davies

To take the next stage in his development, Max Verstappen has to make a fast start to the 2018 Formula One Drivers' Championship. The Dutchman has the potential to challenge Lewis Hamilton at the top of F1, but has to find the consistency that eluded him in the last campaign. Verstappen announced himself on the scene with a victory in his first race at Red Bull. He became the youngest driver to win a Grand Prix when he triumphed in Spain in 2016. The Dutchman continued to perform well for the rest of his maiden term with the Austrian outfit, finishing fifth in the Drivers' Championship.

Today I could finally #unleashthelion 👊 Warming-up the tyres was difficult, because it was very cold. But the first impression of the #RB14 is good, a positive feeling! #keeppushing #F1Testing pic.twitter.com/WJ3214yvHr

— Max Verstappen (@Max33Verstappen) February 27, 2018

However, the 20-year-old was unable to kick on from his promising first season with a contender. A number of retirements hindered his progress. Verstappen found a semblance of form towards the end of the campaign, recording two victories, although he still finished well off the pace in sixth place.
Red Bull has made improvements to its car for the 2018 campaign, but whether it's enough to challenge Hamilton at the top is another matter. The Dutchman is backed in the latest F1 betting odds at 9/2 to win the crown, although it will take a special effort to dislodge Hamilton.

F1 2018 Season Preview: Mercedes - Deja vu all over again

The question remains the same. For the fifth pre-season in a row. Just how is Mercedes to be toppled? All Mercedes statistics since the start of F1's hybrid era in 2014 are crushing: four championship doubles from four; 63 wins from 79...

Photo: Octane Photography

You could make the case that the rest are still no closer to answering it either. Doubtlessly Mercedes last season faced its strongest challenge in this spell. But even so it got 12 wins from 20, and wrapped up both titles well ahead of time.

Last season too the Merc had infamous 'diva' characteristics. But even that may take hope away from rivals - it gives the car obvious room in which to improve for 2018. The car looks like one that's sought to optimise what it was doing in 2017, rather than one seeking a new direction.

Like 12 months ago Mercedes has launched a car with conspicuous greater detail than any other. It ended the first Barcelona test with clearly the fastest laptime, and one set on harder tyres than its pursuers. Like 12 months ago all left the test with a strong sense that Merc is comfortable. The figure of three tenths clear was banded around. The noises from the camp seeped with understated assurance.

New Motorsport Week article: Formula 1 in 2018: Reasons to be cheerful…

Photo: Octane Photography

In what these days seems an annual event, we head into a F1 season amid conspicuous grumbling. No grid girls, new start times, the halo...

Yet while not seeking to discredit the concerns in an attempt to show that things aren't all bad, in my latest for Motorsport Week in the spirit of Ian Dury I list some reasons to be cheerful (one, two, three...)

You can have a read of them here: https://www.motorsportweek.com/news/id/17042

Inside Line F1 Podcast - The Esteban Ocon Interview Podcast

Will Esteban Ocon be in a position to upset Daniel Ricciardo's possible move to Mercedes for 2019? For that to happen, Ocon will need to beat Force India veteran and team-mate Sergio Perez - expect this to be a tough fight. As for Mercedes, they will need to show Red Bull-style guts to promote their young driver to the works team this early in his Formula 1 career.

In this week's episode of the Inside Line F1 Podcast, we have Esteban Ocon join us on our fun show. We speak to the Frenchman about his views on Force India, his areas of improvement for 2018 and how he plans to counter the Sergio Perez challenge. Also, what's his view on the super-sexy next-gen Formula E car? Finally, he signs off with a message for his friend and rival from Formula 3 days, Felix Rosenqvist.

Tune in!

(Season 2018, Episode 6)

Subscribe to the Inside Line F1 Podcast on iTunes and audioBoom for your weekly dose of Formula 1 humour