Ericsson: "Sauber can challenge Renault and Force India at some Grands Prix"

Nothing wrong with Ericsson's optimism, and in that spirit I will challenge your sound prediction, with a wishful thinking one of my own. The top will consist of four teams: Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren. Where Red Bull and McLaren perform better on low speed circuits, and vice versa. Behind them we'll find a tight battle between Force India and Renault, where Renault outdevelops Force India in the end. Behind them we'll find a tight battle between Williams, Sauber, Haas and Toro Rosso which ultimately finishes with those teams ending up in that order.

You could very well be correct. I mean we dont really know how it'll play out yet. My reasoning for McLaren vs Williams is this: McLaren will be using (to them unfamiliar) customer Renault units, a new gearbox and a cooling system supplied by Renault. This will very likely limit what they can do, especially since they wont be able to use all the modes Renault can. Furthermore, McLaren lack one thing that Red Bull has with even their less excellent chassis designs over the years: adaptability. Last year Red Bull excelled both on tracks with plenty of slow corners as well as tracks with long straights, even when using low power modes. McLaren meanwhile were just good at the former. And works Renault will be able to utilize their unit to its full extent. This is why I rate Red Bull, and likely Renault, over McLaren. As for Force India: they've just been so consistent, and unlike Williams they havent hesitated in using the money they get to improve their cars. Couple that with two very competent drivers, and I just dont see them dropping any time yet.

@Calle, you're likely right. And we can count on one thing, my wish will not come true. It never does. I wish for McLaren to do well, and I wish for Alonso to do well and even win a race or two. Also I wish for Sauber and Ericsson to do well. Therefor you can bet that it won't happen....
Logically, taking into account where the cars were last year and driver pairing I think the pecking order will be:
Mercedes
Ferrari and Red Bull
Renault, Force India and McLaren
Williams
Haas
Sauber and Toro Rosso

I think Alonso will produce some stunning races with a car that is likely slightly below Renault and Force India. I also believe that Paddy Lowe will have produced a pretty good car, not far off that of Renault, Force India and McLaren. However, I have very little faith in Stroll and believe that Sirotkin will provide the majority of the points haul. Sauber will likely start the season better than Toro Rosso, with Leclerc pulling off some headline grabbing races, but Toro Rosso-Honda will catch them mid season. Haas will stay ahead of the bottom two, with Grosjean performing his usual hit and miss races, however sometimes when he hits we'll see him grab some decent points.

We'll have to see. I'd love for a good Honda season, and it'd be cool if Ericsson managed to beat Leclerc, and honestly I want McLaren to beat Renault. And I would love it if we'd have a three way fight on top. We can only hope that Mercedes' unability to burn oil and their new attempts to reduce PU dimensions will hurt them slightly, but knowing its Mercedes we are talking about that doesnt seem likely.

To a certain extent, yes. But then we have Force India. Now Im not the world's biggest FI fan, but I have loads of respect for what they are doing on track right now.

Structured? Performance difference used to be even bigger than today. Only difference was that reliability was much worse when points system favored winning GPs instead of finishing them near the top. Unreliable lead cars made it look like there was much more equal chances to win but truth was that midfield had no chance to match performance of leading teams back them either.

Yup, and then we have the uncertain factor of how well the different teams has managed to balance the cars with the halo.