The Impact of Preseason Testing

A new Formula 1 season is ready to begin with this weekend’s Australian Grand Prix! But, who’s looking like an early season favourite and who’s likely to be in for a difficult year?

As always, winter testing was incredibly hard to read. Fuel loads and engine modes are big unknowns so fastest lap times don’t really mean anything at all. However Carlos Sainz setting the fastest lap of the test does at least show that Williams are in a much better place than they were twelve months ago.

The Front Runners

The only meaningful data can be taken from race stint simulations that were carried out at roughly the same time, and based on these numbers McLaren starts the season as favourites. They seem to have a couple of tenths over the teams behind, although this is potentially less over a qualifying lap so pole position at Melbourne should be very closely contested.

The other ‘big teams’ seem to be snapping closely at McLaren’s heels but in what order? It’s very difficult to say for sure. Red Bull looks fast, but the car still looks to have a narrow sweet spot, and it was a handful for both drivers in some configurations during testing. Ferrari’s change to pull rod suspension seems to have introduced some understeer into the car, something that both of its drivers dislike. However, they do still seem to be on the lead pace so I would expect Leclerc to be fighting for pole in Australia, a track Ferrari won last year.

McLaren’s closest competitor would appear to be Mercedes. Russell seemed impressed with the progress the team had made over the winter and both drivers seemed at ease leaning on the car. However, there is a potentially large caveat here. The temperature in Bahrain during testing was unusually cool, around ten degrees down on winter 2024, and last year’s Mercedes was always at its best in cooler conditions, so their true pace is still something of a mystery.

The Tightening Midfield

As for the midfield teams, it seems as close as ever. The biggest winner over the winter would appear to be Williams, who, after their fairly torrid 2024 campaign, appear to have made a good step. Alpine also looked good which isn’t surprising considering their much improved pace in the last few races of 2024. 

Racing Bulls look slightly behind these two with Haas hard to read as all their testing appeared to be on heavy fuel loads. 

The team that seems the most concerned is Aston Martin. The goal was to create a car that’s easier to drive, and whilst on-site reports suggest they’ve gone some way to achieving this, the lap time doesn’t seem to be there. More damning is Alonso’s verdict ‘it's difficult to believe that things will change so much compared to Abu Dhabi’, a race in which he finished over a minute and twenty seconds behind the leader.    

Finally, there’s Sauber who unfortunately still don’t seem to be making the most of their run up to become Audi and look comfortably last both in terms of pace and the behaviour of the car on track.

The real fun of this time of the season is that no one really knows how things will shake out once everyone is running their cars at racing speeds.

What does seem clear is that 2025 looks like being a very close and exciting year for Formula 1.