2020 F1 Australian Grand Prix preview: Dark horses or Bulls on parade?

Melbourne is not a bad place to start for the Silver Arrows, with the 35-year-old having secured seven of the last eight pole positions at Albert Park in a run dating back to 2012.

Success on Saturday, though, has rarely translated to the top step on Sunday. Hamilton has achieved race victory on just one of those occasions, back in 2015.

Team-mate Valtteri Bottas was the latest to deny Hamilton a win from pole in Australia, as he led home a Mercedes one-two last year.

There may never be a better time for ‘Bottas 3.0’ to arrive, with the beginning of the F1 schedule looking so uncertain.

If there is a weakness for Mercedes, it might be unreliability. Hamilton came to a halt during testing and all Mercedes-powered cars ran the final two days with engines turned down.

Team principal Toto Wolff, however, maintained that the team is fully prepared for round one of the season.

“We managed to get through most of our programme as planned at the winter tests; however, we faced some reliability issues that we needed to resolve,” he said.

“We’re glad that we encountered these issues in testing rather than at a race weekend as we could work on fixing them without any penalties.”

This season Binotto has not been shy in downplaying hopes, heading into the first round of the year after testing sessions where it did not appear to show its hand.

Early analysis shows that the car is not too far off that of the pace-setting Mercedes, with long-run speed seemingly its strongest asset.

Sebastian Vettel will be hoping to improve on a fourth place finish 12 months ago, and believes a truer reflection of Ferrari pace will be on show.

“Say Melbourne and three things come to mind: sunshine, a buzzing atmosphere and bumps,” he said.

“Every year we know that the Albert Park track is going to be very bumpy. In fact, it’s that characteristic which makes this track a real technical challenge and that’s probably the reason we drivers like it so much.

“The first race of the season is always special and I think it will allow us to get a better idea than we had in testing as to what the hierarchy is between the teams.”

Does Ferrari really have a car incapable of winning, or does it have a dark horse ready to steal a march on its rivals?

In 2019, Verstappen showed just how ready he was to be in a title fight with Lewis Hamilton, and the war of words between the two has heightened the prospect of the pair going at it hammer and tongs on track.

Alexander Albon impressed during his nine races with the team in the second half of last year and was unlucky not to achieve his first podium at the Brazilian Grand Prix after contact with Hamilton’s Mercedes on the penultimate lap.

Getting a full test with a new car rather than being dropped into it mid-season puts him in a much better position going into Melbourne, with both feet firmly under the table now at the team.

McLaren

McLaren’s 2019 was finally a sign of progress: both drivers shone and the team surpassed power unit provider Renault to finish as best of the rest in the constructors’ championship behind the top three.

Carlos Sainz’s sixth-place finish in the championship last year is further evidence of the progress McLaren has made since switching from Honda power, though this year the team faces tough competition as the midfield closes up further.

“We head to Australia ready and excited for another season to start. Following a successful pre-season testing, we feel prepared for the challenge of 2020 but conscious of where we need to focus,” team principal Andreas Seidl said.

“The Australian Grand Prix is where we first see how competitive all the teams are without the usual caveats of testing, so there is plenty to learn.

“Building our understanding of the MCL35 early in the year is crucial to our positive development.”

Racing Point has maintained that its copy of the Mercedes W10 is well within the rules, and the team showed signs that its gamble to copy the 2019 championship-winning car looks to be paying off, with impressive pace on show throughout testing.

Technical director Andrew Green defended the team’s position and said that rivals had dropped the ball in comparison.

“I think [complaints from other teams] boil down to the fact that some of the teams may not have done as good a job as they should have done, and I think we’re probably seeing that,

“For people to think, to take a team like that and inject money and resources in it, and it wasn’t going to improve, was just naive. And I think they just haven’t stepped up to the plate.”

AlphaTauri

Team Principal Franz Tost was happy with the new team gear as Toro Rosso became AlphaTauri over the winter break but will be more eager to know where the team sits in the F1 hierarchy.

“We will get a slightly clearer idea in Australia, because testing is just testing, and the Albert Park track is very different to Barcelona,” Pierre Gasly said ahead of the race.

“It’s a street track, very bumpy with very low grip levels, so we might see another picture to the one that came out of winter testing.

“What is clear is that it is again going to be very tight in the midfield, even a bit closer than last year.”

Daniil Kvyat was also upbeat about the teams chances at the opening race of the season.

“The car feels like it has good potential, it’s just down to us now to unlock it.”