Come 4pm Sunday all eyes will be – all things going to plan – on Sebastian Vettel, who will be poised to challenge the Mercedes cars, which will have presumably qualified on the front row.
Even if that most likely scenario of a Mercedes-Ferrari rows one and two lockout comes to pass, it should be equally likely that the race will still be close.
Mercedes may have a head start, but Ferrari’s intent has been obvious since its 2013–14 turnaround and second-round win in Malaysia last season.
In this resurgence, Sebastian Vettel’s role cannot be understated. The German’s presence has united where Fernando Alonso’s divided. It has soothed where his inflamed. And it has reinvigorated where his made bitter.
This is of course of no disrespect to Alonso, who had fair cause to feel aggrieved after seasons of under delivery from the Scuderia despite the exchange of possibly the best years of his career. But where Alonso was desperate to succeed, Vettel is prepared to build.
In Sebastian’s sights is an imminent fifth championship – and barring a major error in working with the tweaked 2017 regulations, Ferrari should be able to deliver the goods.
But Ferrari has its sights set further on the horizon – far further. With the services of today’s Vettel secured, Maranello is preparing for the next Sebastian Vettel.
Ferrari knows the pain of failing to prepare. Its collapse, as temporary as it ultimately was, came about by having a technical and sporting hierarchy unprepared for change and without redundancy.
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In 2010, when Alonso lost his first Ferrari championship bid, Chris Dyer was decided to be the man responsible and was hastily shuffled aside for Pat Fry, who himself departed just a few years later.
At the end of 2013 the team panic-bought Kimi Räikkönen from Lotus when it thought it was about to be caught without a star driver at the height of speculation that Alonso would be cutting ties at the end of the season. Räikkönen has clearly not been up to the task, and Alonso left one season later.
And in 2014 the team’s poor start in the hybrid power unit era was pinned on Stefano Domenicali, who was duly brushed aside but without reasonable replacement – Marco Mattiacci ran the team for just seven months before Maurizio Arrivabene took the helm for 2015.
These bouts of unpredictability, stereotypically Latin though they are, have also been a long-term anchor around the team’s neck, thwarting success when a more thoroughly prepared team may have escaped failure – elite sport is often defined by one per centers, on which the Italian title challenges of 2010 and 2012 fell down.
With new management and a renewed impetus for victory comes a renewed approach to the structure of Formula One, however, which brings us back to the starting grid this Sunday. All eyes will be on Vettel as he attempts to take the fight to Mercedes, but some number of those eyes will be trained on the new Vettel – Max Verstappen.
The stars are aligning in that fantastically poetic way they tend to – seats open as contracts close, drivers move up as others move on, and Verstappen is maturing just as Ferrari’s long-term driver plan requires a fresh star driver. Just ask the man himself.
“I’m very happy with Red Bull,” Verstappen said when asked if he is tied to Red Bull beyond this year. “I don’t see any reason to change that. You also have to be loyal – they gave me the chance to start in Formula One.
“Like I said, I’m very happy at Red Bull – then we’ll see what happens in the future.”
The bare minimum denial – and why shouldn’t he keep his option open when Red Bull Racing’s competitive future remains far from certain?
But Verstappen is the end goal of this cycle as the man who replaces Vettel, possibly by then a five-time (or more) world champion. Before that can happen the team must begin its rejuvenation in the short term with the superseding of Räikkönen.
There was one man on the receiving end of more than his fair share of Ferrari speculation in 2015, and at the dawn of 2016 Daniel Ricciardo is remaining as guarded about his future as ever.
“It’s still very early in the season,” he told the press on Thursday. “To give you a boring but honest answer is that I’m just completely focused on this year now and with Red Bull. That’s where it stands.”
What we know for sure is that without a major lift in his game to bring home points for the constructors championship, Räikkönen will be sent packing before long.
Does this mean a Ricciardo-Vettel reunion on the cards, before Vettel moves on to make way for Ferrari’s next generation in Verstappen? Only time will tell.
But if you ran Ferrari, knowing all you do about the mistakes of the team’s past, wouldn’t you consider it in your interests to bank on a strong succession plan for long-term success?
Follow @MichaelLamonato on Twitter for updates from the paddock throughout the #AusGP weekend.
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