F1 2016 veers off track, again

05 January 2016 - 02:32 By Andrew Benson

The excesses of Christmas and New Year may still be fresh in the mind, but the new Formula 1 season is closer than you might think. It is just 75 days until the lights go out in Melbourne's Albert Park for the start of the Australian Grand Prix, and in factories across Europe the 22 cars from 11 teams that will contest the season are already coming together.As the clock ticks down to the start of the shortest period of pre-season testing in F1 history - just eight on-track days in Spain starting on February 22 - we look at the three key issues that could shape the 2016 grand prix season.Can Mercedes handle driver rivalry?Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff has clearly spent his Christmas break pondering how to handle the rivalry between his drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.The tensions between the two were largely buried through last year as Hamilton cruised to the title, but they re-emerged in the final six races as Rosberg finally found his form.This may well have been caused by Hamilton easing off, having tied up the title with three races to go. But if the German can continue the performances that led to a run of six poles and three wins with which he ended the season, the fight could be much closer in 2016.The likelihood of Mercedes remaining the team to beat has left Wolff pondering his duty to the wider sport and he has raised the possibility of letting the drivers race more freely in 2016."I want the dominance to continue but if it continues like this I need to think what we do so we do not become the enemy," Wolff told the Mail on Sunday. "Maybe it's about unleashing them completely. Give them their own strategy."Hamilton and Rosberg have been allowed to compete on track for the past two years, but within specific guidelines operated by the team.Will Ferrari's revival continue?Ferrari were a team to a large extent reborn last year, the pain of a winless 2014 behind them and three excellent victories by four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel raising optimism for the future.But can they keep it up?Last year's progress was based on a very specific issue. The new hybrid engine had a design flaw in 2014 - its energy recovery system was under par - and Ferrari rectified it the following year.But, despite being not far off engine parity with Mercedes, they remained on average 0.6 seconds a lap slower than the champions in qualifying. In Formula 1, that's an awfully large gap to close in one winter.This year's car will be the first to be produced fully by the reshaped team under highly regarded technical director James Allison.Its performance relative to Mercedes will be a good indication of whether the Italian team really are on the road back to success.Will politics overshadow the racing again?Last season was an especially bad-tempered one off-track, with political arguments - many of them revolving around engines - poisoning the atmosphere in the paddock and between the sport's heavy-hitters.And the new year starts with two important deadlines.On January 18, the engine manufacturers will deliver to the strategy group of the sport's bosses their proposals for making power units cheaper, simpler, noisier and more freely available.And January 31 is the date the governing body, the FIA, set for its president Jean Todt and F1 commercial boss Bernie Ecclestone to come up with proposals to solve pressing issues - specifically on governance, power units and cost reduction.The two dates are interrelated. If what the engine manufacturers propose does not meet the satisfaction of Todt and Ecclestone, they may seek to act under a "mandate" given to them by the FIA to make changes. But Ferrari have already said the FIA has no right to grant them that power.Red Bull's engine crisis is partly the cause of all this. But that story will rumble on - the former champions, who are close to Ecclestone, have a stop-gap solution with a re-badged Renault in 2016 but no supply sorted for 2017.Add in a potential EU investigation into the governance and prize-money structures of F1, and there is a severe danger that politics will overshadow the racing again.BBC Sport..

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