Ranked: the 10 F1 teams of 2020 ahead of the Australian Grand Prix

Mercedes-AMG – favourites once again

Optimism is natural on the eve of a new season and yes, we might well be in for a fantastic three-way scrap for top F1 honours in 2020. Then again, Mercedes looked forebodingly composed in Barcelona with the Mercedes AMG F1 W11 as it prepared for the big push to win a remarkable seventh consecutive F1 crown.

It wasn’t so much the fast times, although both Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton proved more than capable of banking those. It was the consistency over long runs that really stood out, beyond its headline-stealing dual-axis steering innovation (very clever, that). This is surely now unequivocally the most accomplished team in the 70-year history of the F1 World Championship and there’s not even the slightest whiff of complacency. If anything, the Brackley/Brixworth squad seems more fired up than ever. Expect the silver cars to explode from the blocks this weekend.

Ferrari – racing under a shadow

Compared to its fiery form last winter, Ferrari had a slightly downbeat pre-season with the Ferrari SF1000. And the winter coup of securing Charles Leclerc on a fat five-year contract was quickly put to the back of most minds by the lack of urgency in testing – and then a bombshell on the evening of the final day.

The FIA statement explaining it has come to a “settlement” with Ferrari over suspicions the team wasn’t always running entirely legally last year – and the subsequent revelation the governing body was pushed into such a move because it simply couldn’t prove it – means the season will start under something of a cloud. If the coronavirus wasn’t bad enough, now Ferrari has undermined F1 just at a time when we could all do with some good news. What a shame.

Red Bull – second best?

Has Red Bull jumped Ferrari to be the biggest challenger to Mercedes? That was one of the key questions left hovering after the tests. Not everything went to plan for the team – Max Verstappen had his fair share of spins in the Red Bull RB16 in windy conditions, plus a Honda engine failure – but there’s a sense the team that ended 2019 strongly could take another step up this time around.

If that’s the case, Alex Albon in the second Red Bull must make the most of it. The British-born Thai deserves his shot at a full season following his solid rookie campaign in which he shone in a Toro Rosso before being switched to the ‘A-team’. Now he needs to give Verstappen the odd scare to hang on to this coveted drive.

Racing Point – copy that, Lawrence Stroll

The last season for the team in its current guise could well return it to the glory days of Force India, when the small independent squad established itself as the ‘best of the rest’ in F1. Fourth is the new first for F1’s unofficial ‘Class B’ of jostling midfielders.

Lawrence Stroll’s outfit ruffled some this winter by openly admitting what was visibly obvious: that its new Racing Point RP20 is a conceptual copy of last year’s Mercedes W10 – even if the team dismissed any suggestion that it had crossed the line in terms of sharing IP with its power supplier. Next year, the team becomes the official Aston Martin works entry. But before all that, it might well find itself pretty in pink in the final year of these current regulations.

McLaren and Renault – living in the real world

A sense of realism, of feet planted firmly on the ground, is the mood shared at both Renault and its engine customer McLaren. The pair vied for fourth place in the standings, with McLaren comfortably taking it thanks to the impressive Carlos Sainz Jr. and highly promising rookie Lando Norris. The pair, buoyed by a largely happy experience in 2019, have played their part in shaping the McLaren MCL35 under new technical director James Key – and there is a palpable sense of quiet optimism that the regeneration of a once-great team will continue this term. But no one, including Zak Brown and Andreas Seidl at the top, will be taking that for granted.

At Renault, a sense of gloom drifted over the team, even after the marquee signing of Daniel Ricciardo from Red Bull. The car just wasn’t fast enough, but the team also appeared to give up too many points on race strategy. Ricciardo is a proven top-line F1 star, and in the second and last year of his current deal, he’ll be fired up to rekindle the qualities that made him shine so bright at Red Bull – especially as he might well be in the hunt for a move back up the grid with a top three team in 2021…

The battle between McLaren and Renault, not to mention that promising Racing Point, will be intense. Renault was embarrassed to fall behind its customer in 2019 – and there’s a judgemental company board to impress, too. Much is riding on a strong season before the new regulations kick in next year.

The rest – Williams on the rise?

Alfa Romeo will probably shine from time to time, especially with 40-year-old Kimi Räikkönen enjoying a long Indian summer out of the limelight. The same is true of newly named AlphaTauri (formerly Toro Rosso), which has two highly motivated talents in Daniil Kvyat and Pierre Gasly in the cockpits of the AlphaTauri AT01. Those two will have more than one eye on bouncing back into the Red Bull A-team for the future, despite both having suffered the ignominy of relegation during their careers. As for Kevin Magnussen and Romain Grosjean at Haas, both had a tough 2019 with a car that struggled to perform on Pirelli's tyres. Perhaps against expectations, both have retained their seats for this year and will be under pressure to pay back the team with performances that merit a continued presence in F1 beyond 2020.

And then there’s Williams. The team sunk to a depressing rock bottom last year – at least we hope so. In Barcelona, the signs were the team has taken a genuine upturn with the Mercedes-powered Williams FW43. At least the team turned up for testing this year, and on time too. George Russell needs a half-decent car to prove to his benefactors at Mercedes that he’s worthy of graduation up the ranks, while new boy Nicholas Latifi will be out to shake off his pay-driver tag.

So that’s the 10, and at long last we’re nearly there – despite the threat of coronavirus. Lights out and away we go.

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.