Rivals should be wary of attacking Haas

The 2018 Formula 1 season has finally kicked off and we can now forget any winter anticipation that this was going to be one of the closest years in a long time and that we would have lots of cars in contention for victory. Very little has changed and, really, why should it?

The regulations have more or less stayed the same and the big boys have still got more money, more manpower, better facilities, stronger drivers and just as much commitment to moving forward as the smaller teams. So given those circumstances, if anyone out there can explain to me why the pecking order should have changed then please, answers on a postcard.

The big talking point in the pitlane was how Haas had improved and how its car looked very similar to a 2017 Ferrari.

Well, Haas has a very close technical working relationship with Ferrari so it shouldn't be a surprise to see some resemblance along the way. But as long as Haas can convince the FIA that it has complied with the 2018 F1 sporting regulations appendix six, which establishes what a competitor can use from another team, then I am pretty sure it will be fine.

As a small team, Haas using as much as it can legally from Ferrari is a good decision. Ferrari is able to do a better job than Haas could do for many years to come. The cost is probably similar to doing it yourself, but the end result is that you can focus your small team on the things that make the car go faster and bring inthe things from Ferrari that can otherwise let your car down - for instance the gearbox, hydraulics, driveline etc.

In the past, there have been a few court cases comparing what constitutes intellectual property rights. They are long, drawn out affairs and the outcome is usually fairly questionable. So my advice for anyone would be to stay away from that and let the FIA decide if there are any grounds for investigation.

Court cases comparing what constitutes intellectual property rights are long, drawn out affairs and the outcome is usually fairly questionable

It is also very easy to jump to conclusions on how competitive a team is or is not, so to try to understand this a little better and to also look at where the teams stand now the 2018 season has kicked off, I've done some pace comparisons.

Taking last year's team performance order from Melbourne and comparing it to this year's Australian Grand Prix gives us an indication of who has moved forward and who hasn't.

I will also put in the 2017 overall season in brackets, just to get a comparison of what happened at race one and then how the complete season unfolded.

If you also take into account that Lewis Hamilton was on pole for both the 2017 and '18 races, and compare his performance year to year, it shows what improvement a top team can make up over a season and with a new car.

The 2017 pole position time was 1m22.188s, and in '18 that came down to 1m21.164s - a 1.24% improvement. Some of that will have come from the Mercedes engine, some from the Mercedes chassis, some from Pirelli's new tyre range and possibly even some from the driver himself. So it's not difficult to see that much more than a one-and-a-bit percent improvement over a season, even from a top team, is fairly difficult to come by.

By converting the fastest single lap set by each team to a percentage against what we got from this first race of 2018, we can easily see who's hot and who's not.

Mercedes

Improved by 1.24% year on year and remains at the front, so this is the measure against which the rest are compared.

Ferrari

2017 gap to Mercedes 0.326% (0.202% for season)
2018 gap to Mercedes 0.818%

Lost 0.5% year on year in Melbourne - and even more compared to the whole 2017 season. I think the school report would read 'must try harder'.

Red Bull

2017 1.578% (0.897% for season)
2018 0.881%

A major improvement year on year thanks to its bad start 12 months ago, but Red Bull has held station compared to Mercedes as far as the overall 2017 season is concerned. So it has work to to do if it is to challenge at the very front.

Haas

2017 2.295% (2.773% for season)
2018 2.492%

This is the really interesting one. Haas was the talk of the paddock; was it getting too much information from technical partner Ferrari, or was it even going so far as to run a 2017 Ferrari with a new paint scheme? Well, if you look closely, Haas is actually closer to the fastest Mercedes time in Melbourne in 2017 than it was this year.

Williams

2017 2.744% (2.439% over season)
2018 3.778%

Not really very impressive. To stand still is negligent, but to lose over 1% year on year and 1.3% compared to the complete 2017 season is downright irresponsible.

Toro Rosso

2017 2.797% (2.645% over season)
2018 4.150%

I'm pretty sure Toro Rosso thought it would have done better, but for a small team that actually does everything itself, including designing and building its own gearbox, to build a new working relationship with new partner Honda will take time.

Force India

2017 3.520% (2.114% over season)
2018 3.500%

Compared to Melbourne 2017, Force India has stood still. For quite a few seasons, it has been a team that waits to see what everyone else has been up to and then introduces developments and in '18 it certainly needs that. And quickly, too, because the middle of the grid is going to be super competitive this season.

Renault

2017 3.532% (2.101% over season)
2018 2.918%

A small step forward compared to the start of 2017, but compared to the overall performance of last season Renault has dropped off by more than it would have expected.

McLaren

2017 3.939% (2.425% over season)
2018 3.115%

Similar to Renault, an improvement. But I'm sure McLaren would have expected more from its engine supplier change especially because, as Fernando Alonso said last year on many occasions, McLaren believed it had the best chassis in the pitlane. Now it has the power unit to prove it.

Sauber

2017 5.204% (4.044% over season)
2018 4.179%

A decent improvement year on year, but a small drop-off compared to how its overall 2017 season compared. The change from a year-old Ferrari engine to a current-specification unit should have yielded more, so it's really the chassis Sauber needs to focus on.

Yes, the lesser teams have more room to move forward but they are more restricted with budgets etc. So I think you could very easily say that the job is just as tough no matter where you are in the pecking order.

For a big team such as Red Bull, which started last season poorly, it's a different story. It has the expertise and budget to recover quickly and that's what it did, but Red Bull still didn't really become a championship threat to Mercedes or Ferrari. This year, it has started very similarly to where last season ended.

Basically, that leaves us with the following as a performance order starting the 2018 season. It will be interesting to do this again after four races when things have settled down.

Mercedes
Ferrari +0.818%
Red Bull +0.881%

And then the others:

Haas +2.492%
Renault +2.918%
McLaren +3.115%
Force India +3.500%
Williams +3.778%
Toro Rosso +4.150%
Sauber +4.179%

So it is still very much a two-championship performance spread with the haves and the have nots. But from my analysis, Haas hasn't really reinvented the wheel. It has just built on what it had in 2017 and a lot of the others have tripped up.

Will Haas be able to maintain that performance? If 2016 and '17 are anything to go by, then no. But I am sure it will have learned from its season-long inconsistency from the last two years and be working pretty hard on not letting it happen again.

Haas must believe in itself. If it can be as competitive as it was in Melbourne then it can do it again

Now for the race. It was actually a good race and this current breed of cars and their speed actually make the racing look good. But still it is just too difficult to overtake.

With that in mind, you need a car that is able to qualify at the front. With the extra power modes that Mercedes has available, that is exactly what it has on tap.

From pole Hamilton led away and very soon he was out of the DRS range so was able to dictate the race pace fairly comfortably. The pitstops started to unfold and Kimi Raikkonen and then Hamilton pitted, but Sebastian Vettel stayed out and that was when luck played a big part in the end result.

First, Kevin Magnussen pitted and headed out with a loose left rear wheel. A lap later, Romain Grosjean pitted and again left the pits with a loose left front wheel and that led to a virtual safety car being deployed to stabilise the formation of the race.

It was a real pity that the wheels fell off Haas's wagons at a race where it was showing a true level of performance from both cars.

When something like that happens it is very difficult to take, but all you can do is look at what the problem was and instigate fixes that make sure it never happens again. Haas must believe in itself as a team, and if it can be as competitive in both qualifying and the race as it was in Melbourne then it can do it again.

It might just be time for Haas to design its own wheelnuts as opposed to using Ferrari components...

When the Haas-related VSC came out, Vettel was 12 seconds in front of Hamilton. He nipped into the pits and came out still ahead.

This was possible because the cars on the racetrack are running at reduced speed, so the loss of coming through the pitlane and stopping for tyres is not such a big one.

The surprise for me was that Mercedes felt that it had it all covered. Vettel was always going to come out in the lead given the advantage he had. But don't be fooled and think Ferrari had a magic strategy, all this came about because he stayed out earlier when the others pitted and was in the right position when the opportunity arrived.

What the race did show was that it is still impossible to follow another car closely. Above anything else, this is the problem that needs to be addressed. You can have as many DRS zones as you want, but real racing is what we all want to see and to achieve that the cars need to be able to follow each other closely for a lot longer.

In the interim, if they were to regulate what engine maps drivers can use it might just make qualifying a little bit more of a lottery. If all drivers had to start the race with the same engine performance maps as they used in qualifying, it would reduce the performance advantage that some power unit manufacturers seem to be able to use for those few laps.

I know some of the power unit manufactures have put a huge effort into this area and might not agree, but in the interests of the big picture perhaps they just need to bite the bullet and allow the overall performance to come from the driver and not from a knob on the steering wheel.