2015 Formula 1 guide

MERCEDES
Full name: Mercedes AMG Petronas All Your Race Belong To Us F1
Car: W06 Dominatorrrrrrr
Engine: Mercedes
Drivers: Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg
Mercedes are so confident that they will once again dominate the season that during testing they ran a diesel version of their engine, ‘just to see what it was like’ and during one race simulation let Lewis Hamilton deliberately sit the wrong way round in the car. The only real question is which of their drivers will take the world title. During the off-season, it’s reported that the team considered switching roles so that Hamilton became ‘the one who’s good at qualifying’ and Rosberg became ‘the one who’s good at racing’ but decided to stick with the status quo. Likewise, Rosberg will remain ‘the one who seems eerily calm just to be annoying’ and Hamilton will continue in his role as ‘the one who sometimes puts things on Twitter that make you think he’s a bit of a ballbag’.

RED BULL
Full name: Infiniti Red Bull Racing. No, Infiniti. They’re cars. No, I’d never heard of them either.
Car: RB11
Engine: Renault
Drivers: Daniel Ricciardo, Daniil Kvyat
Red Bull are desperate to give thieves another reason to break into their factory and have been working hard on being the least shit of all the teams that aren’t Mercedes. Daniel Ricciardo has spent the off season at the factory going, ‘Wow! Are these crisps free? Great!’ whilst new team mate Daniil Kvyat has been working tirelessly in a special Adrian Newey-designed laboratory dedicated to working out the correct way to pronounce his surname. 2015’s line-up is to the delight of Alan Partridge fan Christian Horner who regularly makes both drivers stand on the far side of the car park so he can shout ‘Dan! Dan! Dan!’ at them for his own amusement. Horner is famed for his unusual sense of humour, which must be why he’s marrying Talky Spice.

WILLIAMS
Full name: Williams Martini Oh My God This Is Working Racing
Car: FW37
Engine: Mercedes
Drivers: Felipe Massa, Valtteri Bottas
Williams will be hoping to continue last season’s job of delighting F1 fans with how not shit they are. As in 2014, local primary school teacher Valerie Bottas shoulders the burden of being the good driver whilst Felipe Massa plays to his strengths of turning up on time, being reasonably polite and looking as if everything about Formula 1 moderately terrifies him. Williams is a team full of renewed spirit and confidence, and this is reflected in the leadership of deputy team principal Claire Williams who has bought an amusing mug for the pit wall which reads ‘You don’t have to be on the pace to work here… but it helps!!’ The titular leader is known as a good motivator, usually by turning up a races with a Tupperware box full of her smashing home made flapjacks.

FERRARI
Full name: Scuderia Ferrari You’re Fired
Car: S-FIST
Engine: Ferrari
Drivers: Sebastian Vettel, Kimi Raikkonen
F1’s most histrionic team could be in good shape to challenge for the top places that aren’t taken by Mercedes and possibly Williams drivers. Or Red Bull. New recruit Sebastian Vettel is motivated, focussed and contractually locked in to driving for them even after discovering what a dysfunctional cluster of drama queens the team actually is. Meanwhile, rumours suggest Kimi Raikkonen is revitalised to the point where he sometimes knows where he is and who Ferrari are, and maybe even pretends to give a shit about either of these things. After sacking pretty much everyone who works there, the team is now led by a new, highly motived management team, although this story was written over an hour ago and things have probably changed by now.

McLAREN
Full name: McLaren Honda Ask About Our Sponsorship Opportunities
Car: MP4-30
Engine: Hondaaaaargh
Drivers: Fernando Alonso, Jenson Button, Ken Magnussen (temp agency staff)
McLaren enter the 2015 season with what Ron Dennis would call ‘a velocity and functionality deficit and a race vehicle which has the substantial qualities of canine faeces’.  The drivers are clearly dismayed that the MP4-30 has all the pace and reliability of a 1983 Formula Ford car found in a canal and this is especially true for Ken Magnussen who found the whole thing hilarious until he was told he would have to drive the piece of shit in an actual race and promptly tried to get out of it by having a crash. Meanwhile, Jenson Button’s life is being made harder by Mark Webber who keeps texting him pictures of things that are faster than the McLaren such as his Porsche 919, his dog and his house. The real loser in all of this is Fernando Alonso who, following concussion suffered in testing, has no memory of how shitty the car is and will be in a for a horrible surprise when he comes back. Just to add to McLaren’s woes, their new logo has been described as ‘too exciting’.

FORCE INDIA
Full name: Sahara Force India F1 Registered Charity
Car: VJM08
Engine: Mercedes
Drivers: Nico Hulkenberg, Sergio Perez
Cash strapped Force India have been forced to save money on their 2015 car in various ways, not least by ruthlessly slashing their budget for green paint. Also, the VJM08 has a live rear axle and most of the buttons on the steering wheel are just painted on. Keen to lead by example when it comes to frugality, boss Vijay Mallya has promised to cut his personal consumption of sticky buns by one quarter, to just nine tons per race. Talent-wise, Nico Hulkenburg will do everything he can to remain the driver people go to when they want to use the word ‘underrated’ though he may have bitten off more than he can chew with his simultaneous Le Mans efforts which means some F1 races will be contested by his mate Steve with Hulk on the other end of a phone telling him what to do. Meanwhile, Sergio Perez will continue to confuse F1 fans by doing something that leads you to think he’s quite good and then following it with something that leads you to believe he’s a blithering idiot. In addition to this, there are concerns that he will struggle to drive consistently at the start of the season due to uncontrollable fits of merciless laughter every time he sees the McLaren.

TORO ROSSO
Full name: Scuderia Toro Rosso Infants School
Car: STR10
Engine: Renault
Drivers: Carlos Sainz jr, Max Verstappen
Red Bull’s spare team looked brisk in testing and should be assured of another performance that will make them the darlings of anyone who admires solidly unexceptional mid-field results. Carlos Sainz jr should have some pace, especially on the snowy passes of the Alps and the dusty special stages of Greece which no one in the team has yet had the bottle to tell him don’t exist in F1. Max Verstappen is a controversial choice but should be quick, mainly because he wants to get on the podium so he can steal the booze for a party one of his school mates is having when their parents go away. The STR10’s driving position has been specially modified for teenage Verstappen to allow for the fact that he will be racing whilst texting and looking at Snapchat.

LOTUS
Full name: Lotus F1 Team hashtag
Car: E23
Engine: Mercedes
Drivers: Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado
The team with the most non-existent no-claims bonus on the grid return for another season having ditched the dreadful old misfiring engines from a Renault 25 that used to arrive in a broken box from France. With strong, reliable Mercedes power Lotus will have to find another way to avoid getting respectable results which brings us neatly to their drivers. Grosjean seems set to continue looking like a rural simpleton and driving like a man with strong talent but very poor eyesight, whilst Maldonado will give the impression that he has simply no idea what any of the controls do or where the track goes until, on about lap 12, he has an underwhelming accident of such predictability that they won’t even bother to show it on television leaving fans to spend the rest of the race wondering if he’s hit a wall or simply become so confused that he’s accidentally driven out of an access road and is currently scraping the E23 against the bollards outside a McDonald’s drive-through.

MANOR
Full name: Manor F1 Team, Please Give Generously
Car: MR03
Engine: Ferrari seconds shop
Drivers: Will Stevens, Roberto Merhi. If you’d like to drive for our team, call Yorkshire 5372. Bring cash.
The team formerly known as Marussia are back. Probably. To get to the grid in Australia, Manor have had to cut some corners and receive some exemptions from F1 bosses. That’s why they arrived in Melbourne with last year’s chassis’, one of which has the rear axle from a Morris Ital. Likewise, until Ferrari boss Maurizio Arrivabuses cashes the next cheque, the lead car is running the V6 from a crashed Dino crudely bolted to a washing machine motor. The second car is likely to be even slower as its hybrid system is basically the 3-litre V6 from a Ford Capri with an electric toothbrush glued to the side. Manor’s inclusion in the 2015 season is controversial and many teams are said to have opposed their return. Conversely, McLaren were all for it since it gives them a slim chance of not coming in last.

SAUBER
Full name: Sauber F1 Team Giedo van der Garde
Car: C34 Giedo van der Garde
Engine: Ferrari Giedo van der Garde
Drivers: Marcus Ericsson, Felipe Nasr Giedo van der Garde
Sauber enter 2015 as the best mid-field team ever to find themselves at the back. However, they have attempted to correct the dismal form of last season by inexplicably painting their C34 like a low ranking GP3 car. Of more concern is that, following Giedo van der Garde’s socially awkward legal challenge, the team now has three drivers for just two cars, a problem which the team boss hopes to solve just as soon as he has changed his name to Peter Jesus. In the meantime, Sauber is furiously lobbying the FIA to permit driver changes during races so that van der Garde can have a go, as can a man called Dieter from Bern who lawyers say is also entitled to a drive in the car after winning a poorly worded competition run by Switzerland’s second largest chain of shoe shops.