Here, we preview the Formula 1 teams and drivers ahead of the delayed start to the 2020 season.
Alfa Romeo Racing Orlen
Last year it was a new name but still essentially the same Sauber management group of past seasons. Kimi Raikkonen helped earn the majority of the team’s season points haul of 57 and the team boasts an unchanged driver line-up for 2020 with Antonio Giovinazzi targeting Raikkonen’s place as the team’s No1.
Kimi Raikkonen – Comfortably the oldest driver on the grid may have celebrated his 40th in the final weeks of last season but the Finn has hinted this might even be his last season in Formula 1, 19 years after his first grand prix. There was plenty to celebrate last season with nine points finishes, including a season’s best fourth at the penultimate race in Brazil by the 2007 world champion.
Antonio Giovinazzi – The Italian has ambitiously set himself the target of replacing Sebastian Vettel and become Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari teammate in 2021 but needs to beat ex-Ferrari racer Raikkonen first to even enter that conversation. It was something he struggled to do in the last campaign, his best placing of fifth at Interlagos even a spot behind his more experienced teammate.
Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda
The team may have changed to align with Red Bull’s AlphaTauri clothing line but Franz Tost’s outfit very much remains the Red Bull B team. With greater experience with the Honda engine partnership, there are hopes of a climb up the grid from a solid sixth place last season.
Pierre Gasly – The 2019 season proved a chastening one for the Frenchman. Having impressed at Toro Rosso the year before and been promoted, expectations were high. By the mid-season interval, he had just 63 points to Max Verstappen’s 181 and was very publicly dumped by Helmut Marko. But in an exercise in damage limitation, his stock rose on his return to Toro Rosso, who gave him a contract for 2020 under the revamped AlphaTauri name.
Daniil Kvyat – The Russian is well versed in how Gasly might still be nursing his wounds having himself gone from Red Bull’s next best thing to out of favour in just four races and then fluctuating in and out of contention once more. His podium finish in Germany was a stand-out moment although he was still occasionally undone by consistency.
Scuderia Ferrari Mission Winnow
Ferrari, previously seen as the closest challengers to Mercedes, have the potential to unravel quite spectacular. Sebastian Vettel is off at the end of the season, revealing before Austria the team had not offered him a new deal for next season alongside Charles Leclerc. Plus, there is a race to right the gremlins of their car to challenge for the championship?
Sebastian Vettel – The crash between Vettel and teammate Charles Leclerc nicely summed up Ferrari’s season, a potentially changing of the guard in terms of driver No1 and a series of calamitous events, the majority of which befell Vettel. He now lines up in Austria without a drive for next season and feeling unfairly maligned as a four-time world champion. He’ll have a point to prove to his teammate and the Ferrari hierarchy.
Charles Leclerc – Just 21 last season, he showed a remarkable level of unflappable maturity, not raising to the bait to criticise Vettel at times when he surely could maybe even should have done. A year older and a year more experienced with Ferrari, the sport’s rising star along with Max Verstappen has cemented his place as Ferrari No1 with Vettel heading off and will be hoping to add to his two grand prix victories if Ferrari can keep up with Mercedes in the development race.
Haas F1 Team
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Haas were the first team to reveal images of their new car but the team knows it is the sole aspiration they can have for first in 2020. After a woeful upgrade for the European leg of the season last time around, they struggled and instead turned ambitions to 2020 much sooner. As a result, the hope is a much improved campaign a year on.
Romain Grosjean – Compared to Ferrari, it was a mere sideshow at Haas last year as Grosjean had comings together with Kevin Magnussen at both the British Grand Prix and again in Germany. Grosjean recently opened up about his battle with online trolls, his riposte being that “I’m better off being disliked than having no charisma at all” but he knows his drive is under threat following 2020 at Haas.
Kevin Magnussen – The Dane has voiced a pre-season frustration about not being able to fight for the world title and instead “battling for seventh”. But he feels a long way from the driver who picked up second place (his only podium) at his opening race in the sport at the Australian Grand Prix back in 2014. After development woes last season, Magnussen will be hopeful Haas have turned things around noticeably over the winter.
McLaren F1 Team
It was a case of how the mighty had fallen with the doldrums encountered by McLaren in recent years but there is reason for plenty of optimism following the winter. They have one of the best young driver partnerships in Carlos Sainz Jr and Lando Norris and, if they can continue the development curve of last season, ought to have an even better 2020. But question marks remain about their financial plight.
Lando Norris – After some barren years, McLaren finally took a step in the right direction last season and, like the team, Briton Norris was a driver on the rise. He is realistic enough to realise that the fight at the top will be between Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull but McLaren will be hoping to be best of the rest once more with Norris, in his second season, hoping to leapfrog Sainz.
Carlos Sainz Jr - Helmut Marko, who placed him at Toro Rosso for his first F1 drive, stuck the knife in during the season build-up to say, “Carlos is quick, but he is no Verstappen”. But the reality is last season the Spaniard had comfortably the best season of his F1 career and delivered consistently on his early promise. Expectation from team boss Zak Brown is that he can raise it up a notch in 2020 before his switch to Ferrari.
Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team
The unstoppable force of Formula 1, the big question mark is whether Ferrari and Red Bull can start the season with aspirations to derail the Mercedes juggernaut. The team has been bullish following a new £20million-a-year cash injection from Britain’s richest man in Jim Ratcliffe and his Ineos company as well as hopes of Lewis Hamilton signing on the dotted line post-2020.
Lewis Hamilton – The 35-year-old very clearly has his sights set on equalling Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles, a tally which had looked untouchable until Hamilton and Mercedes’ dominance kicked into life. The Briton is the early title favourite even while his future has remained unsettled. Talk has shifted from a final move of his career to elsewhere on the grid back to a bumper three-year deal to stay put.
Valtteri Bottas – By his own admission, the Finn was no match for Hamilton over the course of the season but, in his third campaign with Mercedes, he enjoyed his best, which included four wins. At the season’s end, he said he had found his own way to beat his teammate and dethrone him as world champion. It would take a monumental shift from past history but there is no denying the 30-year-old is quick on his day.
SportPesa Racing Point F1 Team
The team is on the precipice of a potentially big shift with team owner Lance Stroll having acquired a 16.7% stake in Aston Martin and revealed the team will be rebranded Aston Martin for 2021, ending years of speculation about a potential F1 from the marque. With Sergio Perez tied down to a new three-year deal, there is optimism.
Sergio Perez – The Mexican has made no secret of his impatience for success. When he signed a new deal to take him through to the end of 2022, he said it would be his last deal in F1 if he could not have aspirations for race wins. That may look beyond his team but things are looking infinitely better than mid-2018 before the takeoever, which came too late for the cash injection required for a proper 2019 campaign. Eight podiums in his last nine races of 2019 give reason to be positive.
Lance Stroll – Once maligned as a crash-prone driver, the Canadian showed a marked improvement last year, most notably with fourth place at the German Grand Prix. However, he was publicly left to rue an error which let Daniil Kvyat past and cost him a podium finish. He needs to improve qualifying, having outqualified Perez just twice last season.
Aston Martin Red Bull Racing
Confusingly, the Aston Martin name will be elsewhere on the grid this season with Red Bull Racing but with that particular deal set expire later in 2020. Team principal Christian Horner has been making positive noises about Max Verstappen battling for the drivers’ crown and the team for constructors’ honours.
Alexander Albon – The Thai-British driver goes into his second season and his first full one with Red Bull – he switched midway through to replace Pierre Gasly last summer – knowing he is very much at Max Verstappen’s team. But a stunning debut drive from 17th to fifth essentially secured his place at the team. He needs to eradicate the errors, such as his Russia qualifying accident, and close the gap on Verstappen.
Max Verstappen – In the off-season, former world champion Jenson Button described Verstappen as the fastest person ever to drive a Formula 1 car, high praise from a former teammate of Lewis Hamilton. The flying Dutchman proved the unlikely closest challenger to Hamilton and Mercedes last year with three impressive race wins and his hope, even expectation, is that he can push for the title this time around.
Renault F1 Team
This year marks the end of a five-year plan by Renault to return to a force in the sport as a factory team once more. There has been plenty of promise and there is belief increased power from the Renault engine can help catapult Daniel Ricciardo and Esteban Ocon, back on the grid after a season out, up the world order.
Daniel Ricciardo – The Australian raised a few eyebrows when he left Red Bull after seven years with the marque at Toro Rosso and then Red Bull. Whether that risky decision to quit and join Renault has paid off will begin to become clear when his home race kicks off the season in Melbourne. His stock is still high in the Formula 1 paddock and he will then move on to McLaren for the 2021 campaign.
Esteban Ocon – It left a far few F1 pundits scratching their heads to understand quite how a driver of Ocon’s calibre came to be driverless last season but, having had a season on the sidelines, he is back on the grid as Nico Hulkenberg’s replacement. His long-term employers Mercedes still rate him highly and thought about bringing him in alongside Hamilton this season. If he can prove his worth at Renault, then he could yet be Bottas’ successor.
ROKIT Williams Racing
It’s difficult to be too positive about Williams’ ambitions for the coming races. Last year, it was a tough watch again seeing one of the sport’s most famous names struggling to get itself off the back of the grid. Nicholas Latifi comes onto the grid as the only 2020 rookie with George Russell taking part in his second season.
Nicholas Latifi – There is just one rookie on the grid this season and that is the 24-year-old Canadian after finishing runner-up in the Formula 2 Championship season following four race wins. Brought in as Robert Kubica’s replacement, he is all too aware as his Williams employers trying to become a phoenix from the flames and return to the force of F1’s former frontrunners.
George Russell – The highly rated Briton is another fancied by Mercedes in the long-term but said it was too early to move him to the front of the grid for this season. Having won himself a place at Williams with a powerpoint presentation to them team technical boss Paddy Lowe, he failed to win a single point – the only driver on the grid not to do so. Yet he came out from the season with his reputation enhanced having made his Williams car at times look comfortably better than it probably was
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