Unless you have been living under a rock, you will be well aware by now that there will be no racing in Formula 1 through the month of April. As a result of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, which doesn’t appear to get any closer to a genuine resolution, F1 has been forced to call off its races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
The five-week gap until the Miami Grand Prix, on the first weekend of May, is no genuine shutdown like the ones teams get during the summer break. But while it is a welcome reprieve for F1’s extremely hard-working travelling crews, work continues at pace at the factory to digest data from F1’s opening leg of the season and prepare upgrades for Miami and beyond. For some teams it is a welcome break to address its shortcomings, while others could have benefitted from more track time.
Who will miss out – Mercedes
Naturally, the team that would have benefitted the most from the action continuing is the one with the best chance to win in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Mercedes has been the class of the field, and would have been presented with a great opportunity to further bank points by sweeping the Middle Eastern rounds before rival teams have a window to bring significant upgrades.
Speaking purely about the sporting side of the equation, Mercedes chief Toto Wolff said: “I think we would have maybe wished that it continues over into the two Middle Eastern races and we can score a few more points.”
Mercedes isn’t taking its early advantage for granted, expecting a huge development race to kick off in the coming weeks and months that may bring its rivals closer or even on par. At the same Mercedes’ customer teams keep making inroads on the headstart the works team has regarding how to fully exploit the complicated new power units.
“People have learned now how to optimise these systems to their benefit and we’ve seen that first indication [at Suzuka],” Wolff added. “What looked like a home run in the first two races for us isn’t the case. Miami is also going to be a restart for me.”
As an aside, two fewer races before the start of June also means two fewer races Mercedes-powered teams get to race before the stricter compression ratio tests come into play, set to be introduced after rivals’ concerns over what the Brixworth based builder is doing. But whether or not that will greatly affect Mercedes and its customers depends on who you listen to. Mercedes has always been adamant it won’t be a factor.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Artur Widak / NurPhoto via Getty Images
Who will benefit – McLaren
Take your pick here, as any team that is chasing down Mercedes will naturally welcome the gap. McLaren is perhaps the pick of the bunch, because it was always going to aim for Miami as the site of its first major upgrade package, rather than fast-tracking items out to Bahrain. It therefore won’t lose anything from not running in the Middle East, and will instead lose fewer points to Mercedes and potentially Ferrari.
McLaren’s start of the year has been ravaged by reliability issues, with a variety of battery related problems forcing both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri out of the Chinese Grand Prix before the start. But the reigning world champions appeared to be turning a corner in Japan, with Piastri looking good value for his second place after leading the early running.
Norris was still on the back foot after more reliability issues limited his practice running, but gradually the team has been unlocking more performance from its Mercedes power units and its energy deployment demands.
“I think there’s some indications of progress from a performance and overall competitiveness point of view. I think this progress comes from the fact that we are getting a little bit more out of the chassis through the set-up. But mostly we are getting more out of the power unit,” Stella told Sky after qualifying in Japan.
It will now hope to repeat its 2023 heroics by making a huge step in Miami, though its rivals will obviously be trying to do the same.
Who will miss out – Aston Martin
On the one hand, the break appears to be good news for Aston Martin’s power unit provider Honda. The Japanese marque will be afforded more time to react to a disastrous opening leg of the campaign and implement further reliability fixes without the distractions of taking part in two race weekends, with another step understood to be coming for Miami.
But with Aston Martin likely unable to fight for points any time soon anyway, there was little downside to racing in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia for the race team. Instead, Aston now misses out on even more crucial mileage to actually understand and develop its AMR26 after falling behind so dramatically during the pre-season and in Australia. As Honda’s only runner, the more data the team can gather the better.
Lance Stroll, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Rudy Carezzevoli / Getty Images
“We cannot produce miracles in five weeks,” Aston’s trackside chief engineer Mike Krack said. “It is continuous work. I think we have seen with our issues that we had since Barcelona, that if you work hard in two three months, we have managed to improve the reliability to the point that we are on a level that we can at least run, and we can at least race. So, I think we will not close the gap come Miami. But we will try everything to reduce it.”
Who will benefit – Williams
Other than Aston Martin, Williams has been one of the biggest disappointments of the start of the new rules era with a car that is overweight, lacking aerodynamic load and harbouring more inherent balance weaknesses that appear to be difficult to dial out in the short term. And like McLaren, it also had its work cut out to optimise the competitive Mercedes power unit.
As a result Williams has yet to qualify higher than 15th for a sample size of four qualifying sessions, including China’s sprint weekend.
Team boss James Vowles called a frustrating Japan weekend a “line in the sand” as Alex Albon treated the back half of the grand prix as a glorified test session. By changing front wing settings on Sunday it was at least able to get a small head start on its sizeable job list at its Grove factory, with parallel programmes ongoing to pare down the FW47’s weight and improve its aero performance.
“It’s obviously the same for everyone, but for us it’s going to take advantage of it a bit more than the others,” Albon said. “We’re pushing along hard for this upgrade for Miami, just to get it ready, basically, more than anything else. We’re basically going to be in the factory every week for those weeks.”
Carlos Sainz added: “It’s exactly what we needed. A bit of a reset to come up with kind of a new plan, given that everything we’ve done up until now clearly from 2025 into 2026 didn’t work and we need to press the reset button.
“I cannot assure you that we will be a lot more competitive in Miami, but this five-week break can give us a lot of performance midway to the end of the season.”
We want to hear from you!
Let us know what you would like to see from us in the future.
Take our survey
– The Autosport.com Team
Read the full article here