The shapes like I said all seem to be converging more than ever.
It would have been nice if Williams had refreshed the Martini livery just a little bit, but it's alright. The Mercedes is always going to be 'Silver Arrows' so there's no point whining about that one as it's their definite colour as much as 'Rosso Corsa' is to Ferrari which I am delighted to see has been spruced into a slightly darker more metallic shade with much less white. The Renault is pretty snazzy as their corporate colours usually are. I'm not keen on the Alfa Romeo Sauber. The McLaren is cool, not so much for the OMFGZ original McLaren colours but for bringing some colour diversity to the grid. We need a green car back too. Can't Judge on the Red Bull since it's not the race livery and of-course we're yet to see the Force India.
I'm quite looking forward this season at the moment.
I hope that there is a real chance that there could be a three team fight at the top between Merc, Ferrari and Red Bull. A three way tussle between Hamilton, Vettel and Verstappen could be just the stuff and don't rule out Danny Ric either. Bottas could win some more races.. but I doubt he'd properly push Hamilton in the championship. Kimi... mostly on cruise control these days wouldn't be allowed to touch Vettel anyway so meh.
The Midfield should be no less exciting. It will be fascinating to see how Forced India deal with expected resurgences from Renault and McLaren. I think Renault ought to continue their general trend of improvement and I suspect that eventually, in the next few years they will be a title contender again like in their previous works team era. McLaren have a smaller engine shadow to hide in this year. Frankly, I think they dropped the ball before the end of V8 era but even so this Renault customership for them ought to help make up for the last three years. I'd be surprised if we didn't see Alonso on the podium at least once. And if we get one of those odd weekends or funky circumstances, then I think he could be right in there.
Williams will probably make some good progress with the car, Lowe is not a complete Muppet and he's succeeded in pushing through some much needed changes in aerodynamic philosophy. So the car itself will be closer to the pace. But in all likelihood they will slide further down the constructors championship. This will be due to a combination of the likely resurgence by both Renault and McLaren allied to the fact that their driver line up will quite simply be the weakest in F1. I'm confident that Sirotkin will be perfectly competent and he will score decent points when the car is capable. But look at the direct competition: Perez/Ocon/Hulkenberg/Sainz/Alonso/Vandoorne/Grosjean/Magunessen/Hartley/Gasly/Leclerc. That's going to be tough.
I sense Toro Rosso will have more fruitful time with Honda than McLaren did. Red Bull are more interested in building them up into a tangible choice for the works team. Plus Honda have stopped with the old 'fresh sheet' every year approach for this year. There is a much better chance that many of the reliability niggles will be ironed out this time and they should have more opportunity to develop some performance. They're not going to be utterly brilliant obviously.. but not disastrously pathetic either.
Hass, yeah they will be in that midfield group. For what they are, they are seriously impressive. But I don't see how they could graduate past the midfield with the way F1 is currently.
Sauber, well they have really very few excuses to be the tailend charlie this year. Engine back upto current spec. Funding back to relative parity with the midfield privateers and an increased relationship with Ferrari.
Make no mistake.. this is a quality grid we have here. We'll have no old school team being several seconds off the nearest competitor at the back. This year we'll have the title chase up front and then simply the 'midfield'.
