This weekend was the opening round of the 24 race calendar year Formula One season and there is so much to digest already. The big news is the FIA clamping down on the flexible rear wings which made their appearance with McLaren late last season. Teams paid attention to this area and now most teams are operating a similar set up.
This is actually a bigger deal than you might imagine as teams increase their straight line speed by as much as 25km/h using a small gap that appears in the flexible rear wing when under pressure. This is like having your own built in hidden DRS (drag reduction system) that opens up in certain parts of the track to help boost speed.
McLaren have benefitted from this and yes removing this cheat technology could indeed slow them down. I do not think it will impact Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari as their cars were never originally designed with this concept. It is interesting to note McLaren's track speed dominance only came around the time this was introduced.
McLaren's Lando Norris won the opening race this weekend by under a second from Verstappen in the Red Bull in testing wet conditions. The result would still have been similar if the race had remained dry as Piastri the other McLaren driver was being reeled in by Verstappen.
So much is expected of Ferrari this season yet they continually seem to self destruct with race strategies that never work. Both the Ferrari cars finished in 9th and 10th respectively with both drivers being fed different information. LeClerc was told rain was coming and Hamilton was told if it rains it won't be much. Both drivers stayed out on slick racing tyres when they should have been on wet intermediates like all the other cars.
All the teams have a radar monitoring the weather and should have personnel dotted around up to 20 kilometers from the track monitoring for rain. I guess Ferrari have cut that bit out their budget when they could have scored many more points tis weekend than they did. Every racing point won is worth the equivalent of $1 million dollars and they tossed away 9 points or $9 million dollars by being amateurish. As Hamilton had said this was a perfect opportunity to out smart other teams and Ferrari did absolutely nothing.
Ferrari after the chaotic first race will either put things right or they will continue to keep cocking up. I am sure both drivers will have had a few chosen words to say and the team will have to include their drivers in their future strategy discussions.
I know Red Bull, Mercedes and McLaren have teams of personnel crunching the data throughout the race calculating various permutations on what is the best strategies to adopt in order to win the race. You have to wonder if Ferrari have this system in place or not as thinking back they have messed up every season not once, but on multiple occasions.
Shanghai is next weekend and it will be fun to watch how much the FIA directive on the flexible rear wings has affected the likes of McLaren as it could be a complete disaster for them.