Will there be an arms race to Australia?

How much do you think the cars will evolve before Australia compared to the step made from testing to the first race last year?
Jordan Teel, via Twitter

With these new regulations, I am expecting a lot. Certainly more than last year, when the regulations were in their third season.

Most teams will have had to set about manufacturing what we saw at the first test around a month earlier. So, since that point a month of new ideas will have been developed.

The big teams can turn things around much more quickly than the small teams, so it's those that I would expect to have the biggest update kits.

Also, now that teams have had the chance to see what others have done, it will have got the creative juices flowing. But I wouldn't expect anything coming from interesting things seen in testing to be on other cars until a couple of races into the season.

I expect 2017 to be a year of spend, spend, spend. Chatting to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, he joked that he has told the team's financial director to go on holiday for a while because it just has to be done!

People talk about teams sandbagging and not showing their hand in testing. Does this really happen and why would you do that?
David Baines, via email

Yes, sandbagging does happen. In the early tests, teams will do their fastest runs with 'some' fuel on board, and by 'some' one team might have 30kg and know that, on the sniff of an oily rag, it could find another eight or nine tenths when running lighter in qualifying trim.

Others will go out to show what is really possible. Normally, this will be the smaller teams as it can help commercially to get those few extra column inches.

It's just part of the game, but sometimes it turns around and bites you because on very low fuel sometimes the front tyres are not worked hard enough and don't heat up.

You might have a problem where the fuel pick-up doesn't quite work as planed on low fuel, and with the higher forces when ringing the car's neck you get an engine cut out or misfire.

So it's always wise to try the car in that state before you get to a real qualifying session.

How is it that a company like Honda, with all their checks and balances in engineering processes, can get a fundamental thing like an oil tank wrong? This is not acceptable at this level.
Jay Menon, via email

The oil tank concept would be a product of both Honda's and McLaren's requirements; Honda with its oil flow and usage requirements and McLaren with its packaging.

I do agree with you that this sort of component should go through many sign-off procedures from basic running on a flow test bench to make sure the oil flow both in and out are acceptable and on a dynamic rig to make sure that it can still achieve these flow levels under the g-forces these cars experience under braking and cornering.

I don't know in detail what the problem was, but it might just be that someone somewhere 'forgot' that with higher levels of downforce and bigger tyres the g-forces seen in 2016 might just need to be increased by around 15%.

I notice that the front wing elements on the Red Bull turn upwards on the inside, where everyone else's turn sharply downwards. Why is this? Has everyone else missed something here?
David Bennie, via email

The inner end of the front wing flaps is an area that has changed for 2017. This is what the teams call 'Y250', as it's around 250mm from the centre of the car.

In 2016, it was important to generate a very strong vortex coming off the front wing. This would flow down the sides of the underfloor to help the underfloor performance.

Now the regulations allow much more powerful bargeboards and turning vanes around the leading edge of the floor, so this vortex is not required.

Red Bull has opened up its flap detail, which allows more free-stream airflow to get to those bargeboards. This will allow them to work more efficiently.

I don't think the others have missed a trick. They have reduced the aggressiveness of their flap arrangements in this area, but just haven't done it to the same extent Red Bull has.

What is your opinion on the return of the shark fins?
Atte Harmanen, via Twitter

I hate them! To me, the cars with their wider tyres visually look good from the front and rear, but from the side the shark fin makes the rear of the car look too squat.

In reality, it's just a big billboard that you could put advertising on! In the grand scheme of things, they are not required and, in effect, do very little. Maybe the difference between having one that works well and does not is a tenth of a second, so it's hardly necessary.

The objective is to tidy up the airflow to the rear wing, but having seen how much some of the shark fins were vibrating during testing I do wonder if they will even be that beneficial on a consistent basis.

It's encouraging to hear Ross Brawn talking about this as a problem. If I was in charge, they'd be banned right now!

Do you think these new rules will lead to better racing? And will Mercedes walk away easily again?
Jeff Gilmour, via Twitter

No and no!

Only someone with a hole in their head would believe that a racing car with wider tyres and higher levels of downforce, both of which will reduce braking distances and increase cornering speeds - on top of the fact that the airflow wake coming off the cars because of their extra downforce will create more turbulence for the following car and make following closely more difficult - is going to produce better racing.

The other small matter is that the cars are also 200mm wider, which effectively makes the circuit that bit narrower as well.

I'm afraid it's going to be down to the dreaded and artificial DRS to create overtaking. I'm also afraid that will need tweaking because I don't think it will be as good as last year. And I used the word 'good' loosely, because I hate it.

As for Mercedes, it has a good car but what I saw at Barcelona of the Ferrari during the first test and what I expect to see from Red Bull before the first race will, I believe, make Mercedes start to look in the rear view mirrors - because just behind might be something that the drivers didn't expect.

Of course, this all depends how Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull upgrade their cars over the next month or so. So it can all change, but we can only judge things based on how they are now.

Some teams seem to have their mirrors a lot higher up this year. Why might this be?
Richard Randle, via Twitter

I'm pretty sure it is in the interest of aerodynamics, and I can only assume that it just moves them up a little from the top of the sidepods, which is an area that is now being used more aggressively.

I am not sure how this will help with rear vision, given that the rear wing is now much lower and wider than before. The mirror is now in line with that and the 'look-out hole' is dramatically reduced.

It seems to be just another thing that has slipped through the net when the regulations were rewritten.

What do you think of the idea of non-championship races using test and rookie drivers to try new race ideas?
Scott Hayes, via Twitter

All of this needs to be paid for and would the audience be there if Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso and co weren't? Remember, the non-championship races of the past didn't always have all the top names in them.

Surely, with today's technology, we are capable of sitting around a table and coming up with real ideas and performing rudimentary simulations on them.

Most screw ups in the regulations or qualifying and racing formats over the last few years have been known about well before they were made public, it was just the powers that be had their heads so far up their rear ends they chose not to listen to anyone until it was too late. Then getting them to eat humble pie and changing it was a task in itself.

The first thing that needs to happen is for the new owners to request input from you, the fans, the viewers and the media on what is wrong. Once you know the problem, the fix will be easy.

Currently, the constant attempts to fix the unknown problem are just leading to more problems.