Will this be the racing car Mercedes hopes it can win the Formula 1 world championship for the third successive time?

The new F1 W07 Hybrid is one good-looking racing car and it’s not surprising Mercedes has gone for “optimisation absolutely everywhere” with their latest challenger.

The car had it’s first shakedown run on Friday (February 19) at Silverstone, as Nico Rosberg and world champion Lewis Hamilton clocking up just under 100 kilometres between them as part of a promotional event.

Despite winning the constructors’ and drivers’ title in the past two years, the team’s target is still for perfection according to technical executive director Paddy Lowe.

“After a highly successful season all round in 2015, our priority has been to identify the areas in which we were weakest and to try to improve on those,” said Lowe.

“Our objective is excellence in all areas and, while we had some fantastic results last year, there are many areas in which we can still be much better.

“That’s the kind of culture we try to instil throughout the whole organisation – one of constantly striving to reach something better.

“We had a number of races that didn’t go to plan in 2015 – Singapore in particular – so there were a lot of things that needed improving for 2016.

“We are seeking optimisation absolutely everywhere.”

The F1 W07 Hybrid certainly looks the part in terms of beauty. Long may continue the Silver Arrows supreme in Formula 1.

This is the new black, stealthy feel to the Honda-powered MP4-31, as McLaren hopes this car will lead them back into the winners circle.

The Woking-based outfit had a troubled 2015 championship as the Honda power unit struggled with reliability and performance. McLaren finished ninth in the constructors’ championship…

Jenson Button will shakedown the new MP4-31 on the opening day of pre-season testing at Barcelona.

“As we embark on the second year of our renewed McLaren-Honda partnership, all of us remain united in our purpose,” McLaren group CEO Ron Dennis said.

“That purpose is to develop our team towards our shared ambition: to win.

“We’ll make no predictions as to when those wins will come, but I can say without fear of contradiction that every member of our team has worked with truly relentless dedication over the past few months.

“The result is that MP4-31’s developmental trajectory has been usefully steepened over the winter, and I’m consequently very proud of our team’s efforts.”

McLaren has commented that the new chassis as ‘innovative’, and its fortunes will rest on Honda’s off-season progress with the RA616H power unit.

“Learning from last year, we’ve made changes to the compressor and other hardware of the power unit during the break, maturing our overall concept from last year,” Honda motorsport boss Yasuhisa Arai said.

“Our focus will be to test the car’s balance with the new chassis and power unit, and specifically the ERS direction during the eight days of winter testing.

“We won’t know exactly where we stand until we reach the end of the two tests, but we’re looking forward to getting back on track, gathering data, and feeding back the information to our engineers so as to prepare for Melbourne and onwards.”

McLaren retains its ‘size zero’ aero with the MP4-31. The drivers have noted the detail in this area.

“The immense amount of sheer hard work that has gone into the development of the MP4-31 over the winter makes me immensely proud, and consequently I go into the new season with even more motivation and belief,” Button said.

“From what I’ve seen so far, the aero detailing on the car looks fantastic, and I’m really looking forward to beginning the process of testing those new innovations when I get behind the wheel tomorrow.”

Fernando Alonso will test the car on the second and fourth days in next week’s pre-season test.

“The aero package shows fantastic attention to detail,” the Spaniard added.

“The whole car is beautiful in fact – it’s particularly nicely packaged from an aerodynamic point of view.”

Fingers crossed the new Honda will be more competitive this season. The livery makes the MP4-31 a mean machine. Hopefully it can stealth back to winners.

Scuderia Ferrari unveiled their 2016 challenger, the SF16-H, with an online launch and hopes that this racing car can fight the Silver Arrows for the Formula 1 championship.

A retro livery sports the new Ferrari, last seen on the 1993 car. The white stripes appear on the engine cover and front wing.

In terms of the aerodynamics, the SF16-H features a shorter nose compared to last year’s car, while the engine cover appears to be tighter and slimmer.

Meaning the team has worked heavily on engine cooling over the winter period in a bid to make it more aerodynamically efficient.

When questioned about the car’s prospects, team principal Maurizio Arrivabene said: “Normally I am not setting the objectives, my boss sets the objective for the team.

“I think this year, we need to push a bit more. We would like to fight until the end for the championship.

“I know that is not going to be easy, because our competitors are not sleeping, but we are committed to do our best.”

After scoring three victories with Sebastian Vettel last season, Ferrari will be looking to push Mercedes even further this season.

The team made considerable gains with its power unit in 2015 that allowed it to step out of the shadows of its winless campaign in 2014.

But come the conclusion to the season, Vettel still finished 103 points behind Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ standings, with Mercedes 275 points clear of Ferrari in the constructors’ championship.

That underlined the gap Ferrari still has to bridge to Mercedes this year if it is to consider itself a realistic title contender.

Assessing Ferrari’s challenge for the year ahead, technical director James Allison said: “Back in 2013, Ferrari was not at the right level, the championship, except for maybe doing pitstops.

“We’ve worked very hard on all of those areas. Last year was a decent step forward and we hope this car will be another good step forward to make us properly competitive.

“We have improved across the board. All our hopes are in this car, and we can’t wait to see it on the track.”

I look forward to seeing the SF16-H on track too. The retro livery seems cool, similar to the style of the 1970s but the huge Scuderia Ferrari logo seems to ruining the scheme.

Although I do like Kimi Raikkonen’s new red helmet. Fingers crossed The Iceman can join Sebastian Vettel’s success by winning some races this season.

This is the new FW38 that will compete in this year’s Formula 1 world championship. The team believes it will be “a challenge” as it retains its position as the best of the rest behind Mercedes and Ferrari.

The iconic blue, red and white stripes of the Martini Racing colours once again appear on the car.

It seems to be an evolution on last year’s car, but hopefully the Mercedes-powered FW38 will have better performance.

Despite finishing third in the constructors’ championship in 2014 and 2015, Sir Frank Williams knows it will be a tall order to repeat this performance.

“Williams has started to cement our position back amongst the front-running teams after finishing third in the championship in the past two seasons,” he said.

“This has been a great achievement given the resources of those around us.

“Staying where we are will be a challenge in itself, but we are determined to keep improving because only winning will ever be good enough.

“We have a very stable team going into 2016, with Felipe and Valtteri teaming up for a third successive season.

“They work well together and both have the ideal blend of speed and consistency.

“Our technical team has also remained very consistent which will be to our advantage and we have some of the best engineering minds on the grid at our disposal.

“We have a busy couple of weeks of testing coming up to learn more about our package and to refine the car ahead of the first race.

“We will have to wait until Melbourne to find out exactly where we stand in the pecking order, but I’m confident that our hard work over the winter will stand us in good stead.”

Red Bull Racing have unveiled their colour scheme for the upcoming Formula 1 season at an event in London.

The new livery retains the team’s traditional colours of blue, yellow and red, but with a matt finish.

Gone is the title sponsor Infiniti, with TAG-Heuer branding the outfit’s Renault engines.

Daniel Ricciardo has described the revised bold look as “pretty funky” and will shakedown the RB12 during pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

Team boss Christian Horner has commented that this new, reworked colour scheme is to be more exciting compared to the previous seasons.

“We decided that with a clean sheet of paper to go with something a bit more innovative, aggressive, that will stand out in the crowd and stand out in a few more drivers’ mirrors,” said Horner.

“It looks right and things that tend to look right, go right.”

Red Bull’s new chassis was not on display at the livery launch. The Milton Keynes-based outfit will reveal the RB12 in the pitlane come the first day of testing.

UPDATE: This is the definitive 2016-spec Formula 1 racing car from Red Bull. The RB12 powered by Renault and yet branded as TAG-Heuer, thanks to a new partnership deal with the Swiss watch manufacturer.

The bold paint job – with the matt finish texture – does make the RB12 look slick and stylish.

Red Bull Racing’s head of aerodynamics Dan Fallows said “the numbers from the CFD and wind tunnel are pretty encouraging” for the team’s new car.

“Certainly I’ve been incredibly surprised that we’ve been able to get so much out of this set of regulations, which has been fairly stable. It’s a function of everybody understanding the car we had last year but also I think identifying the problems that we had and really focussing on those. I think we’ve made some fairly big steps forward.”

Hopefully the step in aerodynamics will aid the performance of the car and team. Best of luck to the upcoming season.

Renault became the first Formula 1 team to launch their 2016 challenger at a special media event in Paris.

The French manufacturer is returning to the sport as a works outfit, taking over Lotus and being rebranded as Renault Sport Formula 1.

Renault Group CEO Carlos Ghosn spoke about the goals for the upcoming season and beyond, with regular podium finishes a few years away.

“2016 will be a very specific year because we have to set back all the organisation that used to be,” he explained.

“Renault has been involved in the supply of engine only, not being a team, and now we have to reconcile and set up the new organisation between Enstone in the UK and Viry in France and to make this organisation work more efficiently and having the synergy of both organisations.”

“At the end of the day [we have] to prepare the roadmap that we have in mind which is to be in the podium after three or four years. So 2016 will be a year of transition where we have to prepare our future.”

As for the look of the RS16, the all-black (with a splash of yellow) seems very basic for the livery. It’s very similar to the colour scheme of Lotus last season but Renault has hinted it may change by the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.

In terms of the drivers, Kevin Magnussen is back in Formula 1 in a full-time position. He will join alongside the former GP2 champion Jolyon Palmer, while Esteban Ocon is in the reserve role.

K-Mag was a late replacement for Pastor Maldonado after his sponsor PDVSA tore up the contract it had signed following a dispute with Renault.

ART Grand Prix boss Frederic Vasseur was named as racing director while Cyril Abiteboul is managing director and Bob Bell becomes chief technical officer.

So a fresh line-up of talented drivers, a new rebranded outfit and achievable targets for the next few years. I wish the very best of luck to Team Enstone.

UPDATE: This is the proper 2016-spec Formula 1 car from Renault Sport, the RS16. Team Enstone’s latest model was unveiled to the media on the first official day of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Catalunya.

The car is closely based on the design the team used last year, when it was Lotus, with alterations at the rear to accommodate a Renault power unit instead of a Mercedes.

This has resulted in “major changes are at the back of the chassis” according to technical director Nick Chester, “particularly how we have laid out the cooling system.”

The improvements in engineering will play a big factor in performance. With a new driver line-up and a manufacturing backing, Renault Sport are looking for a competitive season. Best of luck to Enstone-based outfit.

 

Nico Rosberg completed the season with a hat-trick of victories, beating his team-mate Lewis Hamilton in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

The season finale lacked drama compared to the previous years as the Formula 1 world championships have been wrapped up already. For Rosberg, this was a comfortable lights-to-flag triumph at the Yas Marina circuit.

Since winning the title at the US Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton had no answer to the speed of Nico Rosberg.

It seems the big pressure was off and Rosberg won every subsequent race, finishing another runner-up campaign with six successive pole positions in total, and a run of victories that took him to 14 overall and provided him with a lift ahead of the 2016 season.

Come the end of the 55 laps Rosberg finished 8.2 seconds ahead of Hamilton, who opted for a different race strategy in a bid to find a way past his team-mate, only to fall short.

When Rosberg made his second pit-stop on lap 31, Hamilton opted to stay out rather than pit on the following lap.

As Hamilton extended the life out of a set of soft Pirelli tyres there followed an exchange of messages between driver and the pitwall over to whether he could go to the end of the race.

With Rosberg closing rapidly, Hamilton eventually pitted for a second time after 41 laps, but rather than taking on super-softs – although he had no new sets left, only used – the switch was to softs, leaving him with a 12.5 seconds margin.

There was another brief surge, but ultimately it was game over for Hamilton who had to settle for runner-up to Rosberg again.

Mercedes set a new record with a twelveth one-two of the season. Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen finished on the podium for only the third time this year, and for once ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who rose from P15 on the grid to fourth.

The Force India duo of Sergio Perez and Nico Hulkenberg finished a strong fifth and seventh either side of Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Williams driver Felipe Massa was eighth, followed by Romain Grosjean in his final race for Lotus ahead of his move next season to Haas. Grosjean used an alternative strategy and a late charge on super-softs to come through from P19 on the grid.

Daniil Kvyat completed the top ten in his Red Bull, fending off Carlos Sainz Jr.

Incidents in a hectic first part of the race included a collision in the pitlane between Valtteri Bottas and Jenson Button.

As Bottas was released – unsafely according to the stewards as he was penalised with a five-second time penalty – and as Button cut across into his pitbox, the Williams caught the rear of the McLaren.

The incident resulted in damage to Button’s rear wing, while Bottas sustained front-wing damage, leading to a long, slow lap back to the pits for a new nose.

That relegated Bottas to P18 at the time, with Fernando Alonso the only man behind as the two-time champion had required his own new front wing at the end of lap one in the wake of a first-corner crash with Pastor Maldonado’s Lotus.

It was the ninth time this season Maldonado had retired, while Alonso’s error incurred the wrath of the stewards as he was also penalised with a drive-through penalty for causing a collision.

Running around at the rear, and just before the midway point of the race, the double world champion suggested he had had enough when he declared over the radio: “If we don’t get a safety car I will retire the car”.

However, Alonso kept going to the flag, ending his worst season – in terms of points scored – since his 2001 debut with Minardi – down in P17, with only Manor duo Will Stevens and Roberto Merhi behind him.

And so ends the 2015 Formula 1 world championship. Full credit to Mercedes in providing a utterly dominant racing car and Lewis Hamilton in winning the title. The others needs to step up their game. Roll on next season.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, race results after 55 laps:

1    Nico Rosberg    Mercedes   1:38:30.175
2    Lewis Hamilton    Mercedes    +8.271s
3    Kimi Raikkonen    Ferrari     +19.430s
4    Sebastian Vettel    Ferrari    +43.734s
5    Sergio Perez    Force India-Mercedes    +63.952s
6    Daniel Ricciardo    Red Bull-Renault     +65.010s
7    Nico Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes     +93.618s
8    Felipe Massa    Williams-Mercedes    +97.751s
9    Romain Grosjean    Lotus-Mercedes    +98.201s
10    Daniil Kvyat    Red Bull-Renault    +102.371s
11    Carlos Sainz    Toro Rosso-Renault     +103.525s
12    Jenson Button    McLaren-Honda   +1 lap
13    Valtteri Bottas    Williams-Mercedes  +1 lap
14    Marcus Ericsson    Sauber-Ferrari    +1 lap
15    Felipe Nasr    Sauber-Ferrari    +1 lap
16    Max Verstappen    Toro Rosso-Renault   +1 lap
17    Fernando Alonso    McLaren-Honda   +2 laps
18    Will Stevens    Marussia-Ferrari    +2 laps
19    Roberto Merhi    Marussia-Ferrari   +3 laps
–    Pastor Maldonado    Lotus-Mercedes   DNF

Drivers’ championship:

1    Lewis Hamilton    381
2    Nico Rosberg    322
3    Sebastian Vettel    278
4    Kimi Raikkonen    150
5    Valtteri Bottas    136
6    Felipe Massa    121
7    Daniil Kvyat    95
8    Daniel Ricciardo    92
9    Sergio Perez    78
10    Nico Hulkenberg    58
11    Romain Grosjean    51
12    Max Verstappen    49
13    Felipe Nasr    27
14    Pastor Maldonado    27
15    Carlos Sainz    18
16    Jenson Button    16
17    Fernando Alonso    11
18    Marcus Ericsson    9
19    Roberto Merhi    0
20    Alexander Rossi    0
21    Will Stevens    0

Constructors’ championship:

1    Mercedes    703
2    Ferrari    428
3    Williams-Mercedes    257
4    Red Bull-Renault    187
5    Force India-Mercedes    136
6    Lotus-Mercedes    78
7    Toro Rosso-Renault    67
8    Sauber-Ferrari    36
9    McLaren-Honda    27
10    Marussia-Ferrari    0

Nico Rosberg is on a winning form on Saturday afternoon with yet another pole position. This was his sixth consecutive P1, beating his team-mate Lewis Hamilton to record the team’s fifteen front row lockout this season.

The Mercedes driver initially trailed the champion in both Q1 and Q2 at the Yas Marina circuit, but Rosberg found the speed when it mattered to top the timesheet by 0.377 seconds.

Sergio Perez showed Force India’s rapid Friday form was no fluke by qualifying fourth fastest, just 0.133 seconds slower than Kimi Raikkonen, who was the only Ferrari driver to make the top ten after team-mate Sebastian Vettel made a shocking exit in Q1.

Perez was provisionally third quickest after the first runs in Q3, but he couldn’t go quicker on his second attempt as Raikkonen improved.

Daniel Ricciardo topped a close fight to be fifth quickest, ahead of Valtteri Bottas, Nico Hulkenberg, and Felipe Massa.

Ricciardo’s Red Bull team-mate Daniil Kvyat was nearly two tenths off in ninth, but well ahead Carlos Sainz Jr, who only made a single run in Q3 and was nearly eight tenths of a second adrift of the Russian’s time.

Sainz bumped his Toro Rosso team-mate Max Verstappen out of the top ten with his final effort in Q2, while McLaren’s Jenson Button missed the cut by less than two tenths of a second as he set P12, complaining of a lack of grip.

Lotus suffered a tricky qualifying session, with Pastor Maldonado only P13 after looking strong in practice, while team-mate Romain Grosjean was unable to set a time in Q2 after suffering technical problems with his E23.

The pair sandwiched the Sauber of Felipe Nasr, who failed to improve on his Q1 laptime and ended up P14.

Four-time world champion Vettel was the biggest casualty of the first segment of qualifying, backing off early on his final flying lap thinking he’d done enough already but ending up a lowly P16 as rivals improved.

It was another disappointing session for the double world champion Fernando Alonso, who looked to be on a decent lap until his McLaren-Honda suffered a left-rear puncture that forced him to back off.

He ended up P17, ahead of Marcus Ericsson’s Sauber, which appeared to suffer a technical problem in the closing stages that prevented him in making Q2.

Will Stevens out-qualified returning team-mate Roberto Merhi by a massive 1.137 seconds as the Manor Marussias again brought up the tailend of the timesheet.

Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, qualifying positions:

1    Nico Rosberg    Mercedes    1m40.237s
2    Lewis Hamilton    Mercedes    1m40.614s
3    Kimi Raikkonen    Ferrari    1m41.051s
4    Sergio Perez    Force India-Mercedes    1m41.184s
5    Daniel Ricciardo    Red Bull-Renault    1m41.444s
6    Valtteri Bottas    Williams-Mercedes    1m41.656s
7    Nico Hulkenberg    Force India-Mercedes    1m41.686s
8    Felipe Massa    Williams-Mercedes    1m41.759s
9    Daniil Kvyat    Red Bull-Renault    1m41.933s
10    Carlos Sainz    Toro Rosso-Renault    1m42.708s
11    Max Verstappen    Toro Rosso-Renault    1m42.521s
12    Jenson Button    McLaren-Honda    1m42.668s
13    Pastor Maldonado    Lotus-Mercedes    1m42.807s
14    Felipe Nasr    Sauber-Ferrari    1m43.614s
15    Romain Grosjean    Lotus-Mercedes    No time
16    Sebastian Vettel    Ferrari    1m42.941s
17    Fernando Alonso    McLaren-Honda    1m43.187s
18    Marcus Ericsson    Sauber-Ferrari    1m43.838s
19    Will Stevens    Marussia-Ferrari    1m46.297s
20    Roberto Merhi    Marussia-Ferrari    1m47.434s