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Five things to look forward to in 2016

©Jamey Price / James Moy Photography

The regulations may be similar and Mercedes expected to set the pace once again, but F1i picks out five things to look forward to in Formula One this year

©Jamey Price / James Moy Photography

The arrival of Haas

Six years after Lotus Racing, Virgin Racing and Hispania joined the F1 grid - of which only one of those continues to race today - a new team will join the party in 2016. Haas’ arrival has been long in coming having deferred its entry by a year, but that should mean it sets itself up with a better chance of making its mark.

Formula One needs more US interest, and the addition of a team which will call home Kannapolis in North Carolina (though pretty much all the work is going on in its Banbury base) could further increase the sport’s popularity on the other side of the Atlantic, if things go well. In order to try and make sure the team is successful, Gene Haas has been working closely with Ferrari and has also selected two drivers with experience - Romain Grosjean and Esteban Gutierrez - to help the team hit the ground running.

Grosjean deserves a better car than he was given in each of the last two years at Lotus and could well find that at Haas given the team’s recruitment of experienced paddock members. Add in Manor’s expected step forward with a Mercedes power unit and we could be looking at a much more competitive grid in 2016.

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.