The fireworks at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix signal the end of the festivities for spectators, and the beginning of an intense season of development for factory personnel. Design, testing, and manufacturing teams drop a gear to complete cars and spare parts for the upcoming season. Simulation personnel test aerodynamic elements and drill drivers to keep skills polished. Finance wings keep an eye on spending, and negotiate sponsorships. Drivers maintain fitness levels and take time off for family or friends. The grandstands are empty, but thousands of engineers keep factories at capacity through the coldest months of the year. We are but one year into the new high-downforce era. Between 2009 and 2016, rear wings were raised, tires were narrower, and front wings, meant to be made simpler, have only increased in complexity, informing the airflow for the entire car. 2017 saw a return to wide, low-slung cars like those we last saw in 2008, forcing teams to redesign their chassis from scratch. Furthermore, 2018 regulations demand use of the controversial "halo" safety device, which will prevent teams from focusing all their attention on improving their 2017 designs. Some teams have changed engine suppliers, for better or worse, and will have to account for the discrepancy in packaging requirements by rethinking rear-end design on the car. I have been keeping up with every team's activities over the offseason, and while my original intent was to form a prediction as to where each team will finish in the World Constructors' Championship, the volume and variety of changes undergone by many midfield teams have made predicting the season a gamble. Even determining whether Mercedes or Ferrari will be stronger in 2018 is tricky, and I daren't put myself in a position to eat my own words.

Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda Scuderia Toro Rosso-Honda Toro Rosso STR13

The team's technical director, James Key, has a gift for designing a solid chassis on a tight budget, with prodigious Dutchman Max Verstappen offering tremendous praise to Key's creations. Toro Rosso's cars receive little development over the season, however, so the team's race seasons often get off to a promising start before the car's performance dips in relationship to the competition. Despite becoming the factory team of Honda, which conveys special advantages for car design, the Honda engine has proven little more than a curse in the V6 era, with McLaren ditching the company for Renault after three consecutive years of feeble, fragile engines. Honda does not expect strong results in the first half of the season, which could take the edge off of Key's STR13, in spite of the confidence in Honda professed by Key, Dr. Helmut Marko, and driver Pierre Gasly. Any packaging advantages granted by Honda's tiny engine may also be offset by the team's loss of its head of aerodynamics. Even if Toro Rosso manages to build a miracle of a chassis, the engine will almost certainly remain uncompetitive for much of the season, and the inexperience of the team's drivers does not help. Brendon Hartley and Pierre Gasly have less than a half season of F1 experience combined, with nine Grands Prix raced between them in the latter half of last season. I expect the team's green drivers and an engine supplier with a stained reputation to counter an initially strong Toro Rosso STR13 chassis, and restrain the team to dead last in the championship.

Haas F1 Team Haas F1 Team Haas VF-18

America's F1 team is still finding its footing. It entered F1 in the final year—2016—of the low downforce era, and had to redesign its car from the ground up for the following season. Despite a pair of remarkable finishes in early 2016, the team's first two seasons have been fraught with poor luck. Brake issues caused chronic hand-wringing for Haas, and a freak incident involving an improperly-secured drain cover pitched Romain Grosjean off the track in Malaysia, and caused nearly $1 million in damages to the team's car. The team's status of the youngest in the sport makes it difficult for outsiders to gauge its strengths, with only two seasons under its belt, each in a different regulatory era, but Grosjean does the job for us. The French driver believes the team's weaknesses lie in midseason development and communication between facilities, and that its greatest strength is a solid chassis out of the gate. Kevin Magnussen nevertheless cited his difficulties with handling an oversteer-prone VF-17, and hoped that Haas will deliver him a more cooperative car in the future. Part of why Grosjean considers development among Haas' shortcomings could be down to early termination of the VF-17's development, which team principal Gunther Steiner considers to be one of the team's foremost mistakes over the 2017 season. Nevertheless, respectable results for a novice team, treading new ground in every season in which it has taken part, has given the team a sense of confidence in its future. Magnussen is faithful that the team can follow in the footsteps of fellow low-budget privateer Force India, which achieved a 4th place finish in the WCC in 2017, ahead of factory teams like Renault and McLaren-Honda. There are rumblings of a title sponsorship from Maserati in the team's future, similar to the relationship Sauber adopted with Alfa Romeo, wherein the team would continue to use Ferrari engines, albeit rebranded as that of another FCA-tied upmarket Italian carmaker. Eponymous team owner Gene Haas is a believer in his team, and hopes to escape the clutches of backmarkery by the end of the 2020 season, with hopes of a Grand Prix win by 2025. Haas' situation resembles that of Toro Rosso in that its car starts strong, and sees little in the way of midseason upgrades, though it has little to worry about from its experienced drivers and dependable Ferrari engine. Difficulties with maintaining consistent performance over the season and an incomplete understanding of Pirelli's tires along with unproven development prowess could leave the team with lowly performance when compared to some of its intended rivals. Its performance in its first two seasons was artificially inflated by underwhelming competition. Manor, Sauber, and Renault were non-factors in 2016, and the only teams that finished adrift of Haas in 2017 were equipped with third-rate engines, compared to Haas' 2017-spec Ferrari unit. Just one team is expected to suffer engine problems in 2018 (Toro Rosso), leaving the team's prospects poor, despite its improvements.

Williams Martini Racing Williams Martini Racing Williams FW41

Much of the attention directed Williams' way in the off season was due to its open race seat, which many expected to be filled by Robert Kubica, for the comeback of the century. Alas, Sergey Sirotkin was found to be both faster and bring more sponsorship money, and the team selected the young Russian to race for them instead. Kubica nevertheless was hired as a reserve and development driver, and is already touted by Claire Williams as having a positive impact upon the team. Personnel changes of greater significance are to be found in the team's design centers, as Paddy Lowe has returned to Williams after almost 24 years away. Lowe has a trophied history in F1, from Mansell's championship win in 1992 to both of Hakkinen's titles, Hamilton's first, and then Mercedes' dominant streak between 2014 and 2016, all influenced by Lowe's technical expertise. He has already made "quite substantial changes" to the way Williams designs its cars, and Lowe will not be alone in altering Williams' technical course, as his presence has helped coax Doug McKiernan into Williams. McKiernan and Lowe were close at McLaren between 2007 and 2012, a period in which McLaren won its most recent championship, and came within spitting distance of another five. Additionally, aerodynamicist Dirk de Beer, present for Ferrari's 2015 revival, joined the team around the same time as Lowe. Little in the way of specific technical information escaped the team over the winter, save for the observation that Williams is now the sole team on the grid thought to be using a transmission case constructed from aluminum, rather than a carbon. Gossip alleged that the team was behind on its crash testing, but a Williams spokesperson formally denied this to The Drive.

Sauber F1 Team Alfa Romeo Sauber Alfa Romeo Sauber

2017 for Sauber was damned not only by a compromised 2016-spec Ferrari engine and its undercooked chassis, but by an incomplete understanding of how the sensitive Pirelli tires worked, which the team cracked late in the season. On a more positive note for 2018, a cash influx, a competitive engine, and sharp personnel, including technical heads, strategists, and drivers stand to make 2018 Sauber's best season in recent memory. Jorg Zander's return to Sauber may be old news, but the German's presence at the team is still relevant when examining the team's prospects. Zander bounced between F1 teams in the 2000s, from BAR Honda to Williams, BMW Sauber, back to Honda, and onward to Brawn—we all know how Brawn's inaugural (and sole) season went. He aided Audi's WEC program in 2015 and 2016, when the aging R18 e-tron quattro endurance racer was at its least competitive, but Audi nevertheless finished the season second in the championship. His breadth of motorsport experience ought to help the team develop a more mature chassis for 2018, and if the photos of the C37 released Tuesday are anything to go on, Zander is far from short on ideas for whipping Sauber into shape. The team possesses the talents of race strategist Ruth Buscombe, whom I highlighted last May, for aggressive race strategies that saw Haas finish P6 and P5 in its first two races. Buscombe migrated to Sauber in mid-2016, and her strategy in Brazil that pushed Nasr to a P9 finish may well have saved the team. Sauber's anonymous dead-last performance in 2017 may have hidden her radical strategies from the public for much of the season, though it shone through in Spain, when Wehrlein achieved P8 on a one-stopper. With the C37 almost guaranteed to be on pace more often, it may give Buscombe more opportunities to sneak Saubers into occasional jackpots of points. Italian carmaker Alfa Romeo's assumption of the role of title sponsor for the Sauber team comes with one of the most desirable perks in motorsport: Cash. Budgetary boons are critical for privateer teams such as Sauber, though let it not be forgotten that the team will also be equipped with current-spec 2018 Ferrari engines, rebranded as Alfa units, a la Red Bull's Renault TAG Heuer engines. Sergio Marchionne, CEO of both Ferrari and Alfa's parent company, FCA, served to bridge the gap between the current and former FCA brands and the team. Accusations that Alfa-Sauber will now play junior varsity to Ferrari, similar to Toro Rosso's relationship with Red Bull, have been waved away by team principal Frederic Vasseur, who describes Alfa-Sauber not as a Ferrari B-team, but instead an Alfa A-team, one which will follow the path of underdog Force India, racing for points with regularity, and occasionally snatching podiums from wealthier factory teams. The team's coffers will further be filled by its sponsorship from Swiss watchmaker Richard Mille, which sponsored cars driven by Alfa-Sauber's rookie driver Charles Leclerc during the 2017 season of Formula 2, which Charles won handily. Leclerc's almost unrivaled performance in F2 has given some the impression that he's among the prodigious greats of his generation, the likes of which are seen on the rare occasion that a driver like Lewis Hamilton, Michael Schumacher, or Max Verstappen arrives in the sport. I speculate Leclerc is being groomed by Ferrari and trained up at Sauber to be the replacement for Kimi Raikkonen, so even if his stay at Sauber involves an early morning check-out, he's almost guaranteed to have the eyes of every top team on him.

Sahara Force India F1 Sahara Force India F1

Renault Sport F1 Renault Sport F1 Renault Sport R.S.18

McLaren McLaren MCL33

David Clerihew/Red Bull Content Pool Red Bull Racing Red Bull RB14

Scuderia Ferrari Scuderia Ferrari SF71H

Tradition dictates no F1 season is complete without Ferrari throwing a tantrum and threatening a withdrawal from the sport. They say they're serious this time, as they always do, but there is no longer a Bernie Ecclestone to rush to Ferrari's side and wipe away its tears. Instead, Liberty Media is having none of the Scuderia's melodrama, with Chase Carey calling Ferrari's bluff, and stating that while the team is important to the sport, it does not deserve preferential treatment. McLaren head Zak Brown backed Liberty's greater good stance on the matter, agreeing on the value Ferrari adds to F1, but also that the team must not be favored. In regard to the team's 2018 season, Ferrari CEO Sergio Marchionne's thoughts on the team's SF71H are in monochrome, as he stated that the car this year is either "a crap car or a real beast." Changes made to the Ferrari-powered Sauber C37 suggest the team has incorporated a long wheelbase design like that used by Mercedes, instead of the shorter wheelbase the SF70H was built upon. This is presumably due to the added high speed stability from a longer wheelbase, allowing lesser downforce levels on fast tracks, and by extension, less drag, and greater straight line speed. The car also features further-cinched side pod inlets, an evolution of Ferrari's radical 2017 design, and McLaren-esque front wing and nose setup. Ferrari's engine was 15 horsepower below and a critical failure above Mercedes at the end of 2017, with three race-ending engine faults to Merc's two, despite supplying one fewer team. The most notable Ferrari engine to give up the ghost was Vettel's in Japan, which some see as the end of the championship fight. Keen to avoid a repeat of these problems in the demanding 2018 season, in which only three engines per driver are permitted, Ferrari's engine has been polished up enough to last seven Grands Prix, its design reportedly an evolved 2017 engine rather than a conceptually fresh design for 2018. Furthermore, the improved engine has been lightened, and its power output is reported by a source close to Ferrari as having broken four digits, well in excess of Mercedes' peak power as of the end of last year. The boys and girls at Brixworth, however, have their own answer to the Scuderia's now four-figure-strong stable...