2021 Formula 1 Season Preview by James Punt
The 2021 Formula 1 Season Preview
The short three-day test has been concluded and the 2021 Formula 1 season kicks off at the new Home of F1, Bahrain, on the 28th of March. The last seven seasons have been the domain of one team and by and large one driver. The Mercedes – Lewis Hamilton combination has won six of the last seven driver’s championships and the other was won by his then teammate, Nico Rosberg.
Formula 1 has a long history of one team becoming a dominant force, winning more money, reinvesting that in the next car and winning again. However, seven in a row has never been done before. Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel won four in a row in the 2010 – 2013 period, Ferrari won six consecutive constructor’s championships from 1999 to 2004 and in this century only five different teams have won the constructor’s championship, Mercedes (7), Ferrari (7), Red Bull (4), Renault (2) and Brawn (1).
Formula 1’s new owners realised that the sport was becoming too predictable and unattractive to the casual sports fan, the audience was drifting away and income shrinking. Something had to be done and as is the way in F1, that means regulation changes, but not just sporting regulation changes. This time the regulations will affect the team’s finances and artificially handicapping the more successful teams to prevent a repeat of the Mercedes/Hamilton era.
2021 Formula 1 Season: Regulation Changes
The really big technical regulation changes are due in 2022 and due to problems caused by Covid 19 last year, this year’s regulations are supposed to be largely a carry forward of the 2020 ones, meaning that there wouldn’t be a lot of costly changes in the middle of a pandemic.
The biggest area of change has been made to the cars to reduce downforce in 2021, particularly targeting the floor and diffuser.
The chassis of the cars will remain the same, but the teams can spend a limited number of ‘development tokens’ to modify the car. Aerodynamics are not limited by these development tokens and no doubt, by the middle of the season, the engineers will have clawed back whatever downforce they lost due to the modifications to the floor. Indeed some teams seem to have already achieved that feat before the season has started.
The floor must now be completely solid, so no more little slots generating more downforce. The floor will also be cutaway at the back of the car, with less surface area again reducing downforce. There are also tweaks to the rear brake duct winglets and rear diffuser, both designed to reduce downforce. The overall reduction in downforce is said to be around 10%.
The engine manufacturers can introduce a new power unit specification before the start of the season.
Aerodynamic testing restrictions
There is one new regulation this season which is designed to prevent the more successful/wealthy widening the gap due to having more resources to adapt to the new aero changes. Teams will be handicapped differently going into 2021, as Formula 1’s new sliding scale system for aero development comes into force.
Effectively the smaller and less successful teams will be allowed more wind tunnel time and more CFD simulations compared to their more successful rivals. Mercedes will be allowed 90% of what they ran last year, Red Bull 92.5%, McLaren 97% and so on, all the way down to 110% for last placed Williams. Mercedes will now have 72 hours, 288 runs and 360 hours of occupancy, whilst Williams will have 90 hours, 360 runs and 450 occupancy hours. This will further be extended for 2022 with the idea being that over time the gap between the haves and have nots will be narrowed, if not entirely closed.
Mercedes Ahead Of The Curve
Of course, the teams knew this was coming and Mercedes took steps to get ahead of the curve. With last year’s car having effectively won the title with months to go, they stopped development work on the 2020 car and moved resources to the 2021 and 2022 cars.
No work on the 2021 cars in the wind tunnels and CFD simulations was allowed until the 1st of January but it would be natural for Mercedes to have more ideas ready to run than teams in the midfield and back of the grid, and even their nearest challengers who spent more time in 2020, developing their 2020 cars, trying to maximise their prizemoney. Mercedes had earned the luxury of working ahead on the 2021 concepts.
This sliding scale regulation may help close the gap in years to come, but I cannot see any reason why Mercedes should not be able to start 2021 at a competitive advantage once again, unless they make a design error.
2021 Formula 1 Season: Cost Cap
2021 will be the first year in F1 history where team spending is regulated, limiting them to a $145 million cost cap in a bid to make the field more competitive. This is the first major step to returning F1 to a more competitive situation. The ‘big three’ will have to operate at a significantly reduced level of spending.
Teams like McLaren, Aston Martin, Renault and Alpha Tauri have been operating not that far away from this kind of level for a while now and theoretically, they should be the obvious beneficiaries, as it brings the big three into their orbit of spending. The likes of Haas, Alfa Romeo and Williams, will still not be able to spend as much as the budget cap allows and they are likely to remain at the back.
It will be very interesting to see how this budget cap will work. Will we see the gap between the big three and the midfield close in 2021, or will it be a more gradual process over the next two or three years? The cynic in me thinks that it may not have the desired effect.
Big Boys Find Loopholes
The big teams always seem to find a loophole or two to jump through, but those teams in the midfield who have had to cut their cloth according to their means for many years, are used to working smarter rather than being able to spend their way to success. Hopefully the gap between the super-rich teams and the midfield will shrink, but only time will tell.
The jury remains out on the likely effects, but Aston Martin/Racing Point/Force India have an excellent pedigree in terms of getting the best return on their investment, while Ferrari have the worst. Logically we should expect Ferrari to struggle to manage on a reduced budget while it will be more of the same for Aston Martin.
2021 Formula 1 Season Testing
Testing for the new season was reduced to just one, three-day, session in Bahrain. Only one car per team was allowed and that will be a handicap for drivers who have moved to a new team, and for the rookie drivers for the 2021 season. Never was a trouble-free test session so important.
Practice Sessions
In a similar vein, the free practice sessions at each race are all to be reduced to 60 minutes. A reduction of 30 minutes for FP1 and FP2. Less time to find the best set up and less time looking at an empty track. The idea being that the less prepared teams are for the race, the less predictable the result may become. Unfortunately, shaving an hour off the total practice time is not radicle enough.
2021 Formula 1 Season Tyres
Pirelli gave the teams new prototypes to test at the end of season test in Abu Dhabi last year. The drivers hated them, as usual. Pirelli cannot just keep on using the same compounds while the cars develop and get faster. We saw at Silverstone last year that at times the tyres were not able to cope with certain conditions and it becomes dangerous if they suffer failures.
The new tyres are designed with a different construction, to give more ‘integrity’. We shall just have to wait and see if the changes suit some cars more than others but expect much gnashing of teeth from the drivers as they complain about a lack of grip and having to look after the tyres too much.
Pirelli say that this year’s tyres do produce slightly more understeer but nothing that can’t be dialled out with set up changes on the cars. They also expect the teams to quickly recover the downforce lost due to the regulation changes and that grip levels will return to 2020 levels.
Same Allocation For All Teams
The teams will all have the same allocations of tyre for every race. Two sets of hard, three sets of mediums and eight sets of soft. Teams will only receive two week’s notice of which of the compounds will be brought to each race, a large reduction on last year when between nine and fifteen week’s notice was given.
Lewis Hamilton is very strong in terms of tyre management and he was very vocal in his criticism of the prototypes used at the post season Abu Dhabi test. He said that they will be a second a lap slower, and he was not alone in his criticism. If is the same for everyone, then no worries, but if one team can find the sweet spot in terms of the car/tyre relationship, they will have a big advantage. The drivers were surprisingly quiet about the tyres at the Bahrain test, and it was the loss of rear downforce which was the main talking point.
2021 Formula 1 Season: Sprint Races
The FIA have decided to trial ‘Sprint Races’ for qualifying purposes. Three races this season will see a 100km race on Saturday to decide the grid positions for Sunday’s full race. The three venues for the trials are Silverstone, Monza and Interlagos.
There will be a ‘normal’ qualifying session to decide the grid for the sprint race which will be run on Friday. At the time of writing, the full details have yet to be finalised, but it is expected that the top three cars in the sprint race will be awarded points, but only a small number and not the as for Sunday’s race. Three points for the winner, two for second and one for third has been suggested.
The idea is to give more entertainment to the spectators and TV viewers. It is hoped that a 45 minute race will attract a bigger audience. Fans with lower attention spans can cope with a short race rather than the 90 minute plus races on Sunday.
Popular Addition
It may well prove popular as the fans get to see two races and two race starts over the weekend, as well as the normal qualifying. However, with many fans working on Friday’s, how many will get to watch the ‘normal’ qualifying session?
It is just a trial and we shall have to wait and see how it goes, but in terms of mixing up the grid, I cannot see it making any great difference. Sure, if Lewis Hamilton has a crash with Verstappen in the sprint race, and they both DNF, then it would make a big difference. But the quickest cars in ‘normal’ qualifying are most likely to be the ones starting and finishing at the front of the sprint race, picking up the extra points for the sprint race and getting further ahead of the upper midfield drivers.
The Bahrain Test
The three-day test in Bahrain was actually quite interesting, more so due to its limited nature. Getting good mileage is always the key at the preseason test. Every lap is valuable in terms of data generated and with just three day and one car per team, even more so this year.
Of course, we normally have the preseason test at Barcelona, a very good test track as it features a full range of corners and long straights. Bahrain does not have the same range of corners, but the track temperatures are more representative of what the teams will face during the season. The fact that the first two days saw windy conditions was not ideal and as is the case with any test, the times set are only an indication of the car’s performance. We do not know how much fuel was being carried by the various teams, nor which power unit modes were being used.
Reliability
One of the standout features of the test was the reliability of the cars. Most teams got plenty of miles under their belt but the two which got the least were Mercedes and Aston Martin. Sebastian Vettel amassed the fewest laps with 117 having lost time with a gearbox problem on day 1 and a power unit problem on the final day. Vettel is racing for a new team this year and he was one of the drivers who needed as much track time as possible to get used to an all-new car for him. He says he needed more laps and that he faces a steep learning curve in the first few races. Teammate Lance Stroll also lost valuable track time and it was not a great test for the ambitious Aston Martin team.
However, compared to past years, there was no outstandingly poor teams and no outstandingly good teams. That said, some teams ended the test happier than others and the unhappy ones included the reigning champions, Mercedes.
Difficult To Drive
It was obvious from early on, that the new Mercedes was difficult to drive. We have become used to Mercedes racing like they were running on rails, practically glued to the track. Not so at the test. Both Hamilton and Bottas spent much of the time just trying to keep the car on the track and occasionally failing. The back end of the car was very loose, and the car looked unconvincing on turn in to corners.
On the second day Bottas did look a bit more comfortable, setting the fastest time of the day but again on the final day, the car looked a real handful. This was not a straightforward case of not finding a good set up but rather that the car has a problem. There was some interesting speculation that the changes to the regulations regarding the floor and diffuser, were made because they might handicap Mercedes more than some other teams, namely Red Bull and Alpha Tauri. Last year’s Mercedes had a particularly good rear end package, giving them excellent rear end grip, and stability. With the new technical regulations focused in this very area, perhaps it should be no surprise that they seem to be the most affected.
High Rake Design Philosophy
Red Bull and their sister team, Alpha Tauri, share the same high rake design philosophy. The rear of their cars have a much bigger gap between the ground and the bottom of their cars. I am not an engineer but have a healthy degree of cynicism. If the aim of regulation changes was to pull Mercedes back into the pack, then find something to change that will hurt them more than others.
The given reason for the changes was to protect the Pirelli tyres from the forces put on the tyres by ever rising levels of downforce and speed. But imagine finding something that could protect the tyres AND handicap Mercedes while giving a leg up to their nearest rivals?
Of the happy teams, the two with the biggest smiles under their face masks, where undoubtedly Red Bull and Alpha Tauri.
Déjà Vu For Verstappen
Max Verstappen had a spin in the very first session and there was a feeling of Déjà vu. He did the same thing at last year’s Barcelona test and it turned out to be a design fault which made the car hard to drive in slower corners and it took half the season to correct. It was a fatal flaw in terms of their championship ambitions.
Could it be that this year, to quote dear old Murry Walker, the boot is on the other Schumacher? Is it Mercedes who have a design fault which might be fatal to their championship hopes?
Of course, Mercedes are not dopes and they will already be going through the data to find the root cause of the problem and find a solution, but a fix may not be the work of a minute, as was the case for Red Bull last year. If it were a simple problem, it would have been likely that Mercedes would have been handling much better by the final day of testing, and it was not.
Long Season Ahead
This 2021 Formula 1 season is planned to be 23 races long, the longest season ever. This does give teams who have built a car with a flaw, more time to find it, fix it and return to competitiveness. However, history tells us that the team that wins the opening race of the season, usually goes on to win the championship. This century 66.7% of the constructor’s championships have been won by the team winning the first race of the 2021 Formula 1 Season. The proverbial ‘Hitting the ground running’ is very important in F1.
Verstappen’s first day spin turned out to be nothing more than a spin most likely caused by the very gusty winds that prevailed on the opening two days. By the end of the first day Red Bull had clocked up 139 laps (more than anyone else) and Verstappen was fastest, while Mercedes managed just 48 laps with Hamilton down in tenth. The times mean little as most of the day was badly affected by high winds and a sandstorm) but the lap difference was huge and being over two seconds off the early pace was a surprise.
Team by Team Testing Verdict
Red Bull
Ended the test looking in particularly good shape. Reliability was very good, and they amassed 369 laps over the three days. The cars handling looked positive, and Verstappen was the only driver to break the 1.29 barrier and did so with what was not the softest tyre available. Sergio Perez got plenty of laps in, just under 990 kms on the road. He believes it will take him around five races to properly get up to speed as he gets completely used to all the Red Bull systems. They can now go back to factory and work on further improvements before returning to Bahrain for the first race of the 2021 Formula 1 Season.
Historically Red Bull have started the season off the pace but have caught up as the season went on. This year they really do look like they will be fast straight out of the box and that is vital if they are to be serious contenders for one or both Championships. The team say that this was their best ever preseason test, and the Bulls are indeed being very bullish about their prospects, while not underestimating Mercedes ability to bounce back.
Alpha Tauri
Arguably the biggest surprise of testing was how good the Alpha Tauri performed. By the end of the three days, they had covered 422 laps, the most of any team along with Alfa Romeo. This was very good news for the rookie Japanese driver, Yuki Tsunoda. He got lots of especially useful time in the car and by the end of the last day, it was he who was competing with Verstappen to set the fastest lap of the test. That he ended up second fastest to Verstappen bodes well for both himself and Alpha Tauri.
That Red Bull and Alpha Tauri have the same Honda power unit, the same high rake design philosophy and ended up as the quickest two cars at the test, is unlikely to be a coincidence.
McLaren
Another team that will be very happy about how the test went. They have had to design the car around a new power unit but with limited scope for changes to the car under the development token system. That they carried out a flawless test is a very positive sign and their journey back to the top level continues.
McLaren have come up with a clever diffuser design, pushing the limits of the new regulations and while this is no silver bullet, they will have gained an advantage by not losing out as much rear end downforce as others. All things considered this looks like a good start to defending third place.
Daniel Ricciardo was a little bit more downbeat about the car, saying that that it wasn’t electrifying, but that was on the first day and in poor conditions. This is Ricciardo’s fifth different team in eleven years and his only really long relationship with a team was his five-year stint at Red Bull.
He said, after the test, that finding the sweet spot when it comes to braking, is different in each car. He is one of the best drivers when it comes to late braking and it will take him awhile to be totally comfortable. However, he, like the rest of the team, will have left the test with all the boxes ticked and can carry on looking at improvements based on the data gathered.
Ferrari
It was a reassuringly quiet test for Ferrari. They need to test their new power unit to make sure that they had indeed closed the gap to the other manufacturers, and it seems they have. Both Ferrari and their two customer teams, Alfa Romeo and Haas had largely trouble free running with plenty of laps completed. Ferrari managed 403 laps and with third fastest time for new driver, Carlos Sainz. There was a small hydraulics problem for Sainz on the last day, but reliability was good.
Where they are in the pecking order is harder to say. It does look like they will be a lot closer to the front but the same can be said about a number of teams. They are likely to have made enough progress for Charles Leclerc to be sniffing around for podiums, but nothing screamed that they are back to 2019 levels of performance. Third place in the constructor’s championship would look to be the limit of their potential but they are certainly not guaranteed to get it.
Alfa Romeo
Kimi Raikkonen completed 166 laps on the final day alone. Great reliability and they have gained performance from the improved Ferrari power unit. In fact, their performance was very similar to Ferrari across the three days. Good news for them, or bad news for Ferrari? That remains to be seen. There was speculation that Alfa Romeo were running their power units at a higher mode than Ferrari which explains their performance relative to Ferrari, but that remains speculation.
It was good test for Alfa Romeo, and they can look forward to a more competitive 2021 Formula 1 Season ahead.
Alpine
Another team who are hard to place after the test. With 396 laps, reliability was good. Much talk was about the rather fat air intake. Alpine say that they have moved some cooling elements upwards hence the bulkier area. This allows then to have a more slimline area around the sidepods. Moving weight upwards is not what teams usually aim for, the lower the better normally, but the aero gains are said to outweigh having a higher centre of gravity.
It looks like a decent car but another very much in the packed midfield group. Good enough for Alonso to shine on occasions? Hopefully.
Williams
Signs of genuine improvement. Williams covered 373 trouble free miles. They gave the whole of the first day to pay driver Nissany which shows that even with new investment, Williams still needs to top up their coffers. They ended the test with George Russell setting the sixth quickest time and they improved their times day by day.
The fact that they got lots of laps in and had no real problems is light years away from their 2019 fiasco when they didn’t even have a car ready to test. This year’s machine looks capable of making inroads towards closing the gap to the midfield and score a few points. Russell is a real talent and a big asset for the team.
There has been concerns raised over the cars aerodynamics however. George Russell said after testing that the team had chosen ‘a peaky aerodynamic design’. It is said to be very sensitive to wind. If that is the case, they didn’t get the best conditions for the first two days. When they get to a race with little or no wind then they may be more competitive. However, it is a mystery why anyone would deliberately design a car with such aerodynamic traits. Even small gusts of wind were affecting the cars handling and with an outdoor sport, you are going to get wind at most races. Not only that but as a team nearer the back of the grid than the front, they will be racing in dirty air, certainly not ‘neutral’ air.
Confidence In Car
Russell is confident that the car can be ‘very fast’, so long as there is no wind. That sounds totally mad, but there may be a reason. They might get the perfect conditions three or four times a year and hope to really cash in. A bit like designing a car to be great in the wet and hoping that it rains at a few races. It would be insane for a car hoping to accrue a lot of championship points, but it may make some sense for a team that is just looking to move off the bottom of the table.
It will be interesting to keep an eye on this and Williams may be a betting proposition when the weather forecast is for little or no wind. Imola has been mentioned as a track where the car can be quick as the track is very sheltered.
Haas
Underwhelming, but that was only to be expected. The car has had a few minor changes but this is very much last year’s car with changes caused by the regulatory requirements. That will have reduced downforce but on the positive side they have the improved Ferrari power unit to boost performance. This just a holding season for Haas, bedding in two rookies drivers and they are favourites to finish last in the constructors Championship.
Aston Martin
With this car sharing a lot of parts and design philosophy of the Mercedes, it shouldn’t be a surprise to see them struggle along with Mercedes. Reliability wasn’t great and only Mercedes completed fewer laps. Electrical glitches, gearbox problems and a power unit problem kept the car off the track too often for comfort. That will have hurt Vettel in particular as he is trying to get used to a new team and a new car with all that entails. With McLaren now having the same power units, Ferrari returning to some sort of form, the competition facing Aston Martin will be stiffer than last year. A low mileage test was not what the doctor ordered.
Mercedes
There is no doubt that Mercedes did not have a good test. The mileage was the lowest of any team there. Mercedes declined to run their ‘filming day’ before the test. That is normally an unofficial shake down test for the teams to just make sure the basic systems are working. The team then turned up in Bahrain and suffered a gearbox failure almost straight away. That was most of the first mornings running lost. It was a very un-Mercedes like problem and approach to testing. Why no filming run? Their reason, the weather wasn’t going to be great for the pictures. An answer that furrowed a few brows.
That the car then struggled to stay on the track with a very unstable rear end sent alarm bells ringing. Bottas topped the time sheets on day two and the team said that it handled better on high fuel runs. However more handling woes on the final day underlined that the car is struggling under the new regulations.
Rarely At Best In Bahrain
There are commentators pointing out that Mercedes is rarely at their best in Bahrain, that they always carry more fuel at tests, that their cars can be sensitive to wind at the best of times and that their engineering expertise will sort any problems in time for the first race. Others are saying that the high rake concept is the way to go with the new regulations and that the whole concept of the Mercedes is threatened by changes to the rear of the cars. I tend to go with the later.
Their design is not only low rake, but also has a long wheelbase. The narrowing of the floor from the midpoint to just in front of the rear wheels, is a greater surface area on the Mercedes that the shorter wheelbase, high rake Red Bull. They have lost more floor by area and therein may lay the problem.
We have the closely linked Mercedes and Aston Martin having the worst tests on one hand, the closely linked Red Bull and Alpha Tauri having the best test, on the other. I do not think that can be accounted for by fuel loads or gusty winds.
How Far Are Mercedes Off Red Bull?
How far off Mercedes are from Red Bull is the big unknown. Estimations seem to range from about 0.5 or 0.6 seconds a lap to up to a full second. I would tend to go with the former and no doubt Mercedes will be taking remedial action to narrow the gap. However, while they are spending time looking for a solution to a problem, Red Bull and the teams who had no problems, will be looking at making further improvements.
There is also the real possibility that Mercedes low rake concept is the problem. If so, changing to a high rake set up is a much bigger job.
There is one mystery at Mercedes. Where did they spend their development tokens? Most teams have either said where they spent them, or observers have worked it out. But not for Mercedes. They have refused to say where they have spent the tokens, and nobody has yet worked out where either. It may be, that the car we saw at the test, will not be the car that starts the Bahrain GP on Sunday. However, turning up with a very different car with no testing carries a lot of risk, so we shall have to wait and see if Mercedes are playing a game of deception. Personally, I doubt it. The body language of the team members wasn’t good and I believe that they have a problem.
2021 Formula 1 Season: Ante Post Selections
There are reasons to think that Mercedes seven-year reign will end this season. Their car has not been born well. They are on the backfoot going into the first race of the season. All hands to the pumps to try and identify the problem and then come up with a solution. If it is just about moving some parts around, they might be OK, but if their concept is indeed flawed by the new regulations, it will take more time to fix.
And of course, this year, all the teams are working under a cost cap. Mercedes, as the Champions of 2020, also have less time allowed in the wind tunnel and fewer computer simulation runs under the new regulations. With all eyes on the huge regulation changes ahead next season, Mercedes may not want to be ‘wasting’ vital resources on fixing this year’s car.
It is not just problems with their car that is the problem for Mercedes. The main opposition has gotten stronger. The Red Bull was a good car at the end of 2020, and they have been able to keep that performance largely intact despite the new regulations. They have made a clever redesign of their rear suspension layout, without spending a token. They have the same parts, just put together differently. Red Bull have copied the very successful 2020 Mercedes rear suspension lay out which made last year’s Merc so stable at the rear and as a result so much better on turn in to corners.
Red Bull In Pole Position
This years Red Bull should start as the class of the field and that is a novelty in the turbo hybrid era. It is not just the car that has been improved. The driver talent has been bolstered by replacing Albon with the hugely experienced Sergio Perez. A new driver will take time to get comfortable with the new team and the new car, but once he is comfortable and driving instinctively, Perez should be delivering podiums for Red Bull, to be able to keep close enough to the front to be a strategic tool for Red Bull. No longer will it be Max Verstappen vs. Mercedes. He will have a wingman and Red Bull will have a driver capable of picking up the pieces if and when Verstappen has a problem.
Mercedes dominance has always been helped by them having the best power unit since the turbo hybrids were introduced in 2014. Red Bull have only had a competitive power unit in the last year. This year, Honda have thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at the power unit. It ran without fault at the test, which can’t be said for Mercedes. For once, Mercedes may not have any power unit advantage.
Wriggle Room
The new regulations will allow Red Bull a little more wind tunnel and computer simulation runs, so they have a bit more wriggle room in juggling developing this car and next year’s car. If they can qualify in front of the Mercedes, they should be able to gain a further advantage by upsetting the Mercedes aerodynamics. The Mercedes have always been slower when racing in ‘dirty air’.
They have designed their cars to be super-efficient in clean air and with having the most powerful power unit for most of the turbo hybrid, qualifying on pole was relatively easy. They had developed the most powerful qualifying mode for their power units to further strengthen their advantage on Saturdays, but mid-season regulation changes ended that last year.
Mercedes have also lost any advantage that their trick Dual Axis Steering system gave them. It is hard to quantify what will be the loss in terms of performance but it just another small negative. Mercedes have been expert in staying ahead by making small incremental improvements to their cars every year. This year it seems they are having to cope with a few incremental deteriorations in performance.
Red Bull Set To Challenge Mercedes
They say it is the hope that kills you, but I remain hopeful that we are going to finally see a real, sustained challenge to Mercedes this season. Hopefully we will see a real Verstappen vs. Hamilton battle raging for the entire season. Who will come out on top? The bookmakers have Lewis Hamilton as the favourite, with a best priced 1.67 (you may get a little more with a casino bookie) and Verstappen as the 3.75 second favourite. I wouldn’t quite go as far as making Verstappen a clear favourite, but the difference between the two looks too big.
Likewise, in the constructor’s championship, Mercedes are now the 1.33 favourites in a place with Red Bull into 4.00 with one firm. The value here looks very much with Red Bull. The car looks fully competitive, but it is the signing of Perez which really makes them a live chance to score the greatest number of points in 2021. Fighting with two drivers will be much more effective than trying to get one great driver and an inexperienced driver to beat a dominant team.
2021 Formula 1 Season Tip: 2 points Max Verstappen to win the World Drivers Championship @ 3.75 with William Hill
2021 Formula 1 Season Tip: 4 points Red Bull to win the Constructors Championship @ 4.00 with Paddy Power, Betfair
A few firms have priced up some side markets. There are the usual, boring inter team H2H match bets. The short priced favourites should oblige if you like that sort of thing.
The ‘To finish last’ market has Williams at 3.00 which is tempting. Haas are the odds on favourite to come last and for good reason. An all-rookie line up and no car development for Haas is negative for their chances, but they will have a better power unit than last year, which will help somewhat. Williams are not going to be world beaters and with an aerodynamically sensitive car they may have an unpredictable car, but Russell is likely to get them into the points now and then. That should be enough, but you never know, we could get a mad race where a Haas lucks into a decent finish and that could be difference. No bet.
One of the specials I do like is for Valtteri Bottas NOT to win a race. That may seem mad for a driver in the dominant team, but he is very much the junior partner at Mercedes. Last year, despite Mercedes being well ahead in terms of performance, he won just two races. In his entire four year period at the dominant Mercedes team, he has won just nine races. That is not great, and he failed to win a race for Mercedes as recently 2018.
Bottas Could Struggle To Win
That was a reasonably competitive season with Vettel, Raikkonen, Verstappen and Ricciardo all winning races, but it was Hamilton who won eleven of the twenty one races and Mercedes finished 84 points clear in the constructors championship. With Red Bull looking like genuine contenders in 2021 and McLaren getting ever closer, Ferrari heading in the right direction and feisty outsiders like Gasly and Alonso on the grid, the threats to Mercedes and Bottas, are not just from Hamilton and Verstappen. He is out of contract with Mercedes at the end of this year and he will be under pressure to have a good season, otherwise he is likely to be looking elsewhere for a drive.
Bottas has won the opening race of the season for the last two seasons and it is his best chance to win a race as for whatever reason, Hamilton is a slow starter, winning just one opening race in the turbo hybrid era. This year that chance is going to be more difficult, even if Mercedes have found a fix for the handling problems so apparent in testing. He has two Bulls to beat as well as Hamilton. He will probably pick up a race win or two, but there has to be a chance that there is a repeat of 2018 and he doesn’t quite manage it.
2021 Formula 1 Season Tips: 1 point Valtteri Bottas NOT to win a race @ 15.00 with William Hill
In the Constructors championship without Red Bull and Mercedes, while it is hard to call who will come out as best of the rest, there does look to be a little bit of value about Aston Martin. I wasn’t particularly impressed by their test. Poor reliability meant a lack of mileage and their high rake design may be a problem, but they remain a very good team and they would have finished third last year, but for a 15 point deduction for using illegal braking cooling air intakes.
McLaren are the 1.73 favourites in this market, deservedly so. They had a strong test and seemed to have bedded in their new Mercedes power units without problem. McLaren ended up as best of the rest, thanks to Racing Points 15 point deduction and they should be able to defend that position. But if not, Aston Martin will be in the chasing pack. Swopping Sergio Perez with Sebastian Vettel is a gamble, but McLaren are having to bed in Ricciardo a new driver as well.
Ferrari Vulnerable
Ferrari are being rated well ahead of Aston Martin, but to a greater degree than looks realistic. Alpine are another team that was hard to call but I don’t see a team going through so many changes can be at its best. Alpha Tauri were very impressive, and they look capable of causing upsets but bedding in a rookie driver will be a challenge.
The best of the rest battle looks likely to be between McLaren, Aston Martin and Ferrari. McLaren should win it but if they don’t, Aston Martin look a big price to pick up the pieces. They may get off to a slow start, but it is a team with a lot of good, clever people and they have the resources to compete.
William Hill have Aston Martin at 9.00 for this market which looks realistic, maybe a little generous, but Ladbrokes are offering 21.00, which definitely is generous.
2021 Formula 1 Season Tip: 1 point Aston Martin to win the constructors championship without Red Bull and Mercedes @ 21.00 with Ladbrokes
As a bit of a contradiction, the final bet is for McLaren to finish third, behind Mercedes and with Red Bull as champion constructor.
