Is Red Bull now Mercedes’ closest

F1 challenger?

As we showed last week, Mercedes emphatically ‘won’ the first three days of pre-season Formula 1 testing. The second test was rather less clear-cut, though a competitive order did start to emerge. Mercedes is still ahead but, as Alex Kalinauckas shows in our analysis on page 18, Red Bull has been quietly going about its business and seems to have good underlying pace. More tricky is Ferrari. Is it really in as much trouble as it looks? Has the ‘settlement’ with the FIA (p4) taken the edge off of its performance or are those two things unrelated? There’s a case to be made that Ferrari is trying to avoid the high expectations – quickly dashed when the cars arrived in Melbourne for the season opener – it had after testing last year. But it does appear that it currently has some ground to make up and Mercedes is on top.

How many races we actually end up with in F1 2020 is more open to question. The Chinese Grand Prix has already been postponed and, with coronavirus still spreading and many events being cancelled, it seems likely that more races will be affected. Motorsport is hardly the most important reason to fly people around the world and minimising the risk and suffering should clearly be a priority, so it’s entirely possible that this year’s world championship won’t reach the record-breaking 22 grands prix originally planned. MotoGP (which we preview anyway on p34) has already lost its first round, which was due to take place in Qatar this weekend, and the Thai GP has also been postponed. More could follow.

One event that did go ahead was last weekend’s Formula E race in Morocco (p40), where Techeetah finally made good on its previous pace. Mercedes is currently fifth in the electric championship…

COVER IMAGES Motorsport Images/Tee

PIT & PADDOCK 4 Ferrari’s private FIA ‘settlement’ 6 Races canned as coronavirus spreads 8 Surprises on Le Mans entry list 10 Corvette eyes World Enduro expansion 13 Opinion: Alex Kalinauckas 15 Opinion: Lewis Duncan 17 Feedback: your letters

F1 TESTING 18 Who won the testing war? 25 All the stats from Barcelona 26 Technical focus on F1 developments 30 Karun Chandhok’s trackside verdict

INSIGHT 34 MotoGP season preview

RACE CENTRE 40 Formula E: da Costa strikes for Techeetah 49 World of Sport: NASCAR Cup

CLUB AUTOSPORT 60 New driver line-ups for British GT 62 Club Porsche prime mover mourned 64 Drag strip revival planned for Yorkshire 65 Opinion: James Newbold

FINISHING STRAIGHT 68 What’s on this week 71 Introducing: Kyle Kirkwood 72 From the archive: 1991 Mexican GP 74 Autosport 70: debutant Swi ’s CART win

SUBSCRIPTION OFFER 12 Special deals for Autosport

COMPETITION 16 Win tickets to Goodwood

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Kevin Turner Editor kevin.turner@autosport.com

NEXT WEEK 12 MARCH F1 season preview: all you

need to know about the

contest ahead

5 MARCH 2020 AUTOSPORT.COM 3