If your team is racing in Formula One this year and it goes by any other name than Mercedes AMG Petronas, you’re pretty much either a 2nd or a 3rd tier team.
Still, that doesn’t mean that the likes of Scuderia Ferrari is just going to throw in the towel and admit defeat so early in the season. The team was encouraged by their result in Australia as well as their pace during winter testing, however everybody knows it’s going to take a lot of hard work to compete for race wins.
Team principle Maurizio Arrivabene is confident, though that’s part of his job. Recently he told Autosport that for them it’s a question of “continuing like this with our technology, working and respecting our programme without panicking,” while later adding that “For the team I was happy, but as a team principal only half of me was happy because one car was stopped on the track and the other guys were on the podium.”
He was obviously referring to Raikkonen pulling out of the Australian Grand Prix because of a wheelnut problem.
The Finn driver was also quoted as saying that “the gap is much smaller in the race than qualifying”, even though the SF15-T is still nowhere near fast enough to focus on Mercedes and leave Williams in the dust – which is another thing Arrivabene argued they should be attempting to do.
As we all know, Williams isn’t standing still either and they’re constantly looking to develop a car which is already extremely quick and reliable.
Whether all this will lead to Mercedes being challenged, or simply to a very competitive F1 season for “tier 2” teams, remains to be seen.
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