F1 in 2013 (first Quarter/5 races)

Sat and watched the Barcelona Grand Prix of Spain this weekend, with mixed emotions. Firstly I am a Ferrari fan, and seeing Fernando winning on home soil is a great testament to the epic driver he is. That first corner, take THAT Lewis and Kimi. A stunning drive, for the man who must be the bookies favourite to topple the Vettel, and more importantly, the Adrian Newey powerhouse that is modern F1. Also the debate over Pirelli is coming to boil and a resolution must be made.

The early part of the season has seen quite a few surprises. The demise of Maclaren, the rise of Force India and Daniel Ricciardo's Toro Rosso, to name but a few. I think it would be easier to go through each team and analyse their current, and projected performance.

Red Bull 
You cant talk about Red Bull in 2013 without bringing up the team orders issue in Malaysia. Personally i believe Vettel was out of order and at such an early stage of the season to  possibly compromise the team is just reckless, and reassures his critics that he does still make mistakes, and the "butter couldn't melt" persona he employs off track has its cracks when put under pressure. However the German-Aussie relationship has never been one that truly worked, despite a relatively quiet 2012, the past few seasons have seen some intense wheel to wheel action between these two. The one that sticks in my mind is Istanbul 2010, when Vettel put Webber out of the race. Team fractures aside Red Bull have not had the same success they have had in previous seasons, they still have a quick car, but are being outshone in their specialist area of qualifying by the Silver Arrow, and simply don't quite have the same race pace of the Ferrari and Kimi's Lotus. Their wins have come from misfortune to Fernando and opportunism with the Mercedes's Tyre degradation issues.
This is Adrian Newey though, and you can be certain they will progress throughout the season and will be hard to beat come Brazil.

Ferrari
The main story with Ferrari is the comparison with how they are currently with how they compared in 2012, it is arguably the quickest in the race pace, and at the hands of a reborn Massa and the ever dominant Spanish matador Alonso, their performance in Spain is one of the best the team has seen since the season opener in Bahrain 2010. The only reason Alonso is not leading the championship is due to factors out of his control, a fualty DRS wing and the teams failure to pit his Ferrari after lap 1 contact with the Red Bull of Seb Vettel. As mentioned, Massa seems to perform better when the car is under him and could surprise a few speculators as to where he finishes this year. Whether its enough to hold off the challenges of young drivers such as Di Resta, Ricciardo, Bianchi and Pic, who are all proving themselves to be the real deal in their own aspects of the field, will be a talking point come the sharp end of the season.

Maclaren

The team that most people have been talking about this season, Sam Michael (chief technical director), has said the radical changes made to the car that have resulted in their drop in performance will help them come the huge regulation changes in 2014, and follows a more progressive and expansive development package. An almost identical replica of what Stefano said about Ferrari 12 months prior. The only difference is, Ferrari had Alonso. As good as button and Perez are, they cant push the car in the ways a "great" driver can. It then is up to the men at Maclaren to come up with a fix to this. I believe that come Silverstone they will be able to challenge for the podium. They can put more resources than the teams around them can, such as Force India, Toro Rosso and Grosjeans Lotus. Its not all bad news however, as both drivers have both proved themselves as capable racers as shown by their battle on track in Bahrain.

Lotus
These guys cam always get away with being branded the dark horse of the championship, because of all the media attention payed to the Alonso vs Vettel battle.Kimi himself is a bit of an enigma. There is a fine line between being quiet and funny, and just plain rude. At times he crosses this, and detracts from some epic driving on track. On the flipside, Romain Grosjean has had a dreadful start, if he's not retiring from the race, he'll make less of an impact than a 2012 Felipe Massa! Again, he needs to find a balance between agressive Spa crash-inducing and so dull it hurts to watch him race. The other factor with Lotus is the fact they have lost James Allison, a great engineer. How costly will that prove to be later in the season?

Mercedes 
When Eddie Jordan broke his prediction that Lewis would go to Mercedes, the whole world was in shock and disbelief. Its looking like a pretty smart move, if they can sort out their rear tyre degredation issues and race pace, then they will consistanly challenge for race wins. A car doesnt usually go from a front row lockout to 6th and 12th. There is something fundamentally wrong with that car, but with Toto Wolff and Niki Lauda ensuring that there is always money being pumped in, they will sort it out, just will it be soon enough to stop the usual protagonists from running away with the title?

Force India
These guys are one of the major gainers this season, with the return of Adrian Sutil and Paul Di Resta driving his heart out, its hard to see why they haven't snuck a podium yet. Sutils return was seen as quite controversial after the events that transpired in China. Paul has got to be on the big teams shopping list come 2014... that's if the Force India isn't already up there.

Williams
This must be heat-breaking for Sir Frank, seeing a potentially race winning car last year. To both cars going out in Q1 consistently. I hate to say it, but unless they can radically turn it around for 2014, then we could be seeing the loss of a legendary team. Its easy to forget that Williams are privately run, and certainly don't have the spending power of the other teams.


Toro Rosso
For me Ricciardo, has been amazing so far this season, he's outperformed that car on many occasions. And the car is clearly quick, however this may be down to fact that, that's last years title winning car. As Red Bull operate a hand me down system. Its pace could be down to the lack of changes in the regulations to encourage competitiveness.


Sauber
Compared to the epic season they had last year, a return to the midfield has been hard for sauber to get used to, Sergio Perez is often reminded that at this time last season, he had double the amount of points driving for sauber than he currently does for Maclaren. 

Caterham/Marussia
The battle at the back is definatly one to watch this year. Initially the Marussia looked the quicker car in the hands of Bianchi, but the Caterham has caught up, all four rookies have impressed in different ways. in terms of raw pace Bianchi and Pic have impressed the most. But Max and Giedo have the potential for sure. The other major thing to mention is that the gap to the midfield has closed hugely. The Caterham was racing massively with the Williams during the Spanish GP.

Tyres

The large number of pit stops in the Spanish Grand Prix has reignited the debate about whether the fragile Pirelli tyres are good or bad for F1. The tyres are part of the car and some teams are using them better than others. Barcelona is always very tough on the tyres - and back in the tyre-war days sometimes you would get two or maybe three laps out of the softer tyres and then be five or six seconds a lap slower for the next four or five laps before they cleaned up and you could push again. Tyre management has always been part of F1, no matter what anyone will tell you, and there has never been a time when a driver could push flat-out for the entire race distance.

Having said that, personally I think four stops is too many.

Pirelli want to have two or three stops and that would be about right. Any more and it gets confusing for people who are not following the race that closely - which, in reality, is most of the audience.The last thing we want is a choice between one or two stops. That would be horrendous at some tracks - boring, processional races. Of more serious concern is that there were more tyre failures in Spain - on Paul di Resta's Force India in practice and then Jean-Eric Vergne's Toro Rosso in the race - to follow the three in Bahrain. And Alonso had a puncture prior to his final pit stop which Ferrari caught before it caused a problem.