This is a good thing for Ferrari heading into the new season, because the regulations are remaining stable -and the closer a team is to the optimum achievable performance under a given set of regulations, the harder it is to find improvements.įerrari, with their huge budget and wealth of technical talent, should therefore find it easier to make gains over the winter than Mercedes. This indicates a substantial chunk of the lap-time difference between them and Mercedes was in the performance of the SF15-T chassis relative to the W06. As the season entered its second half, their deficit to Mercedes in pure power terms was relatively small -just 10 horsepower or so, according to Andrew Benson of BBC Sport. The Scuderia made huge strides in terms of power-unit performance over the winter of 2014/2015. Only this time, there's a good chance Ferrari will be a lot closer. Bernie Ecclestone thinks they have made the sport boring, and many fans would agree with him, but there's little reason to suspect Mercedes will be anything other than the team to beat in 2016 as well. Since the Australian Grand Prix of that year, they've won 84.2 percent of the races, taken 94.7 percent of the pole positions and scored 1404 out of a possible 1684 points. Mercedes have dominated F1 since the start of 2014. So here are five very early predictions for how the 2016 season will go. But we did some at this stage last year and - one glaring anomaly aside -they turned out to be fairly accurate. Predictions are a tricky business at the best of times, and doubly so when they are made without seeing the cars on the track.

Mercedes-powered Manor will be aiming for their best season to date, Renault will want to return with a bang and McLaren, after a dreadful 2015, cannot possibly spend another year at the back of the field. Red Bull will need a little more luck to be able to do the same -and may find themselves in an embarrassing situation in the early rounds of the year. Evidence from 2015 suggests Mercedes will once again be at the head of the field, though maybe not in a class of their own.įerrari made huge strides last winter, and another good off-season will give the Scuderia a real chance of taking the fight to the Silver Arrows. Those two, four-day tests at the Circuit de Catalunya will give us our first solid ideas of who will be competitive in the season ahead, but some clues are already available. The 2016 F1 season kicks off with first practice for the Australian Grand Prix on March 18. Even pre-season testing won't be along until the end of February. It already feels like an eternity since we last saw the Formula One teams and drivers in action, and we still have a long wait ahead of us before we'll see them again.

2016 f1 season highlights