Australian GP: The 2013 F1 Season is GO, GO, GO!

Source: motorsport.com

The stage is set. The actors are about to give their first performance. They've learnt their lines, performed their rehearsals and are itching to get their teeth stuck into the piece of drama set out before them. Like all actors, they are unsure of how this first performance will turn out. Such is the situation in the run up to the inaugural grand prix of the 2013 Formula 1 season: the traditionally fun-loving and astonishingly well-attended Australian Grand Prix in Melbourne. Drivers and other team personnel up and down the paddock know all too well the atmosphere generated by these traditional features of Albert Park; indeed, it's probably why it's traditionally seen as such an exciting and engaging race. The excitement will undoubtedly reach new heights this year, as it seems that the air of uncertainty usually pervading around the paddock at this time is greater than in recent years. Following an interesting set of tests at Jerez and Barelona (to say the least), not even the usual suspects of Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Lotus can be distinguished to a meaningful extent; the teams' running provided us with a delectable set of numbers largely too jumbled to make sense of.

Perhaps the heightened uncertainty has been caused by the shock of one of the few trends identified during winter testing: the unexpected turn of speed that the Mercedes car seems to have acquired. As I'm sure everyone knows, that Merc car achieved a couple of blisteringly fast times around the turns of Catalunya in the hands of both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, in both cases outrunning the next-fastest man by at least three tenths of a second. No matter how much Lewis insists on the amount of work Mercedes still needs to do after such a difficult 2012 campagin-which admittedly saw them two seconds off the race pace and an eye-watering nine tenths off the qualifying pace by Brazil-we all know that it has done a herculean job over the winter to catch up to the front runners. The front wing design seems to have been developed hugely over the winter, maturing from the rather simple three-element design on the W03 2012 car to the elaborate five-element one introduced at the first Barelona test. Assuming what we can from winter testing, they've got the design right. The increased complexity of the front wing seems to have eradicated the understeer that plagued the W03 by increasing downforce levels at the front of the car. This itself seems to reflect the management changes undertaken at Mercedes, with high-flying motorsport boss Norbert Haug being ousted in favour of Toto Wolff and the apparent signing of former McLaren technical director Paddy Loewe for 2014 rendering Ross Brawn's role as team principle now defunct. One can only hope that these changes mean that Merc will be able to keep up a competitive development programme throughout. If they don't, I'm sure a certain Lewis Hamilton will have something to say about it.

Similarly as unexpected as the Mercedes turnaround has been the apparent sluggishness of the new McLaren MP4-28, whose predecessor largely showed very promising signs during winter testing over all three tests preceding the 2012 season. De-facto team leader Jenson Button and even team principal Martin Whitmarsh have admitted that they are "slightly concerned" over the situation of their new charger. Largely the issue lies in the fact that the design of the car is too complicated and too far removed from the MP4-27 for the team to  get a firm grip on, which seems to be demonstrated perfectly in the up-and-down success of the car in longer runs. Some have said that the main problem is inherent understeer caused by a lack of downforce on the front wheels (perhaps caused by a botched attempt to counter the disadvantages of their new pull-rod suspension, which does not often work well with high-nosed cars due to an inability to get necessary components low enough in the chassis to improve handling). In light of this I would say that the resultant inconsistent performance is most likely due to changeable nature of European winter conditions and the subsequent effect that this would have on tyre performance/grip. This was most notable in Barcelona, which saw track temperature highs of 30 degrees on one day compared with an air temperature of less than 10 on others. Despite this it is impossible to truly determine their current form until they get onto a warmer track such as Melbourne, where the new and notoriously degradable Pirelli tyres for 2013 can get up to their proper working temperature and help that poor MP4-28 find some front-end grip... that is until the tyres decide to 'fall off the cliff', which the supersofts will do after approximately six racing laps.

These two teams alone have upset trends of recent years, and seem to have got teams worrying as to where they stand in the pecking order; clearly, previous notions of where a team thought they were may not apply at all. What other trends we've been able to establish so far indicate that Ferrari and Red Bull (both of which I shall discuss later) seem way ahead of the poor McLaren and are on a par with the impressive Mercedes, maybe even a bit quicker. Will the first two free practice sessions of the new season finally dispel the cloud of mystery that has gathered around these top teams? Or will they merely keep us guessing until the cars form up on the grid? I say roll on Sunday, this new uncertainty is killing me.