In 2011 many of the most compelling stories in Formula 1 will come from the midfield. As usual we have the contenders, who will battle it out for ‘best of the rest’ honours, and the pretenders, who will occasionally sneak into Q3 but won’t make much of a dent on the points.
In recent years it has been relatively easy to sort these two groups out, but this year things are looking a little more complex.
At the top of the pack we have Mercedes and Renault, who have both won championships in the past decade (albeit under different names) and both were clearly a step above the rest of the pack in 2010. Much was made of how disappointing 2010 was for Mercedes, although they still finished a comfortable fourth taking out the of best of the rest title.
Over at Renault 2010 appeared to be a return to form of sorts after a disappointing 2009 season. They didn’t win, but they picked up three podiums and possibly could have fought for a fourth if not for a mechanical failure in Japan.
A new owner, new team principle, a new driver line up and a freshly competitive car meant Renault had the chance to reinvigorate themselves and put some distance between themselves and the seedy air of ‘Crashgate’.
In early 2011 things were looking very promising for Renault, they launched an aggressively designed new car which Robert Kubcia put to good use early in the test season, topping the times on day four of the Valencia test. Then disaster struck and Kubica was seriously injured in a rally accident in Italy.
While shocking for Kubcia, undoubtedly one of F1’s genuine stars, it threatens to derail Renault’s return to the top. Nick Heidfeld has been drafted into replace him, but there must be questions about his ultimate pace.
They were evenly matched at BMW, but Kubica was in the first couple of years of his F1 career and improved with each race whereas Heidfeld was in his prime yet struggled to keep up throughout 2008. It will be interesting to see just how competitive Heidfeld and his second year team mate Vitaly Petrov can be this year.
For much of the winter things didn’t look so rosy in the Mercedes garage. Across all tests they struggled to match the pace of the front running teams with Michael Schumacher, Nico Rosberg and Ross Brawn all offering fairly downcast assessments of their position.
They have all, however, held out hope that the last pack of updates due to be fitted in the last test at Barcelona would bring their pace back to their expected levels. At the time these comments seemed to be typical optimistic yet ultimately unrealistic spin.
Yet to the surprise of many when the final updates did arrive and were fitted on the last dry day of running Michael Schumacher set the fastest time of the year at the Barcelona circuit, 1m 21.268s.
This is only one day of running so one should not jump to any conclusions about where the Silver Arrows may end up at Melbourne, but they will certainly head to Albert Park feeling good and no doubt have the McLaren boys looking nervously over their shoulder.
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