If you were technical director at Toro Rosso, what would you be expecting from Honda this season and how would you go about establishing the kind of working relationship you keep saying was missing with McLaren?
David Bates, via email
As far as I'm aware, Honda intends to develop the package with which it finished 2017. This is a positive step, because Honda understands which direction it needs to take to get more from it in both in terms of outright power and reliability.
If I were at Toro Rosso, I would be backing this decision and pushing for Honda to put its main focus in getting on top of any potential reliability problems. If it can do that then it will allow Honda the running time to get the maximum out of the existing package.
It will also allow Toro Rosso to compare its 2017 performance with the Renault to its 2018 performance with the Honda. This will be vital to allow both organisations to set a development direction.
My biggest worry would be that it is now going through a management change with project leader Yusuke Hasagwa's position being replaced by two new roles. A change in this area can be disruptive, but from what I know from working with the Japanese, everyone close to the project would have been fully briefed, so hopefully my worries would be unfounded.
When I was working with Honda back in 1998, all the design and development work was carried out in Japan, and as far as Honda was concerned it had built the best engine in F1.
The fact that it was some 60bhp down on the Peugeot we'd run the previous season was irrelevant. To Honda that was European horsepower and not Japanese horsepower!
Honda believes everything it does is better than what is being done over here in Europe, and sometimes this impression has to be corrected. Honda won't do it within its own group, since they don't want to hurt each other's feelings, so it falls to an outsider to intervene.
Honda sets a plan and that's the direction it is going in. If it's the correct direction, then it's like a snowball going down a hill and nothing can stop it. If it's not the correct direction, then the level of effort and momentum remains the same - only the outcome is less optimal. Nothing within the organisation can stop it, so someone from outside needs to step in with the information required and point out the facts.
In my case it took me four one-day trips to Tokyo, but when Honda bought into what I was saying, it put a plan together overnight, showed it to me the next day, and then went off and achieved it. An update of over 20bhp arrived for the British Grand Prix and that trend continued for the rest of the season.
When Honda identifies what's required (and that's by no means guaranteed) then it has the knowledge, the budget and the commitment to meet the challenge.
With the halo coming in this year, what advantages in terms of cars performance can we expect?
Tono Villalobos, via email
I think what you mean is what 'disadvantages' can we expect from the cars performance!
Any additional weight will slow the cars down - 10kg is equivalent to a loss of roughly three-tenths of a second. An additional disadvantage is that since this component is so high up, it will raise the centre of gravity much more than 10kg of fuel would. So the penalty will probably be that little bit more.
The FIA has upped the minimum weight limit for 2018 by 6kg, but that is not enough and with the extra structures required in the chassis 10kg would be more realistic.
If the teams were struggling to get to the minimum weight limit in 2017, they must find other areas to reduce the weight otherwise they will have a performance disadvantage from the off.
So far as aerodynamics are concerned, yes there will be a deficit but it will be negligible. I'm sure most teams will overcome this with the fairings they can fit around the halo.
Instead of a wing-style fairing, perhaps we'll see a dimpled surface just like a golf ball to minimise its variation in the positioning of the wake coming off its trailing edge.
Who and why do you expect to be the best Renault-powered team? Red Bull, Renault or McLaren?
Oliver Lee, via email
It should be Red Bull, and if not it will have really screwed up. Renault is still in a team-building phase, but in much better shape than at the start of 2017. McLaren should come out of the start gates strong, but will need time to get on top of how to get the best from the new package.
Red Bull started 2017 poorly, and as the season progressed its performance got better. But the reliability suffered, so for 2018 it needs to start in better shape and finish races.
Renault finished the season strongly with Nico Hulkenberg qualifying and racing well in Abu Dhabi. Again, it needs to start where if left off and ensure the car is reliable.
I've criticised McLaren during 2017 for not running its car with the best aerodynamic drag to horsepower compromise. It will need to be on top of that this year, because I certainly don't expect the Renault to be the best power unit package in the pitlane.
Will the F1 competition be closer in 2018?
Stuart Dow, via Facebook
Sorry, but I don't really see what is going to make that happen. The powerhouses - Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull - know that only the best they can do will allow them to challenge for a world championship.
So they'll be pushing in every possible direction to find that extra performance. After all, they've got the budget to back that up, which means that the smaller teams either must get seriously lucky or fall further behind.
We can all dream that the top three teams from 2017 screw up, allowing the smaller teams to be the frontrunners. But usually we wake up before the dream is over to find that the big teams have just spent their way out of any trouble in time to dispose of the smaller teams before it gets too embarrassing.
We can but live in hope.
You often hear references to design concepts. Can you explain in a bit more detail what you mean by a design concept - could you group different cars in various categories of concepts from 2017? And what concept do you expect teams to move towards in 2018?
Daniel Fischer, via email
The design concept is based on where you think your research will take you. You don't start creating one of these cars with a rectangular block and carve it out while sitting on the porch.
You must start with a concept that you believe will pay dividends as you go through the optimisation process. When you first start your aerodynamic research, the car is probably 15-20% away from where you will end up.
The big teams have the structure and the budget to go down as many avenues as required, and are pretty confident one of those areas will generate results. But they still have to start somewhere. I've always likened the process to arriving at a roundabout without a map - you want to get to the seaside but have no idea which way to go.
The big teams have the resource to explore every exit of the roundabout, and because they can do this they will end up at their desired destination.
As for the small teams, they need to get out of the car and have a sniff of the air, and hopefully from that they can pick the correct road. If they do that, they can then do as good a job as the big boys. If not, it will be a season of frustration because very few of them have the budget to have another go at it.
Grouping the 2017 cars, I would put Ferrari in its box by optimising the short wheelbase, Mercedes by going for a longer wheelbase, and Red Bull for using the high-rake concept.
The others are all in there somewhere, but none of them have gone far enough to push one concept to the maximum. It's like the power units and the way Mercedes made the split-turbo work to its advantage, while other manufacturers tried different ideas before realising they had to take that route as well. It all starts with someone believing in where any given package will give them the biggest rewards, and it never simply works from day one - it takes a lot of belief and research.
Do you think Mercedes will change its design philosophy now Ferrari has got so close?
Chris Smith, via Facebook
I'm sure Mercedes will have evaluated what it ran in 2017 against the particular sidepod configuration and shorter wheelbase that Ferrari used, and the high-rake concept Red Bull opted for.
But let's not forget that Mercedes had the fastest car over last season. Yes, it wasn't as good as the Ferrari on the slow-speed, high-downforce tracks, and probably not as good as Red Bull on the higher-speed circuits with slow corners where wing downforce could be trimmed off to improve efficiency.
As Red Bull showed after its four consecutive drivers' and constructors' championships, it's not easy to keep a run of success going. Yes, it had its Renault problems in 2014, but keeping up the momentum as a team is tough, even though Mercedes seems to go about its business in a fairly relaxed state.
The 2018 car will be the first that James Allison will have been directly involved in from the start, so it will be interesting to see what he adds to the group. I don't think we'll see a huge change of direction - probably just a little bit of what Ferrari had and a little bit of what Red Bull had - and I'm sure this will be true of all three teams.
Time usually means that everyone ends up with more or less the same result.
Do you think that Pirelli's many new tyre compounds are truly necessary for better racing? Surely these new compounds increase production costs and therefore tyre fees to teams at a time when we're still talking about cost-cutting?
Jon Chui-Rapley, via Facebook
I don't think they need as many tyres as they've presented. A softer step is necessary, perhaps even two steps, but I'm sure they didn't need the hardest - I doubt very much if we'll ever see it in competition.
The philosophy of the tyres needs to change. We don't need or want this surface-overheating degradation that we observe and which the drivers complain about and have to drive within. We just want tyres that can be driven flat-out, and then when they lose enough rubber they just can't retain the tyre temperature and over a lap or two the performance falls off the cliff.
With this style of tyre characteristics, you would get someone trying to make it to the end of a stint or the race and the performance dropping off two or three laps before the end.
This is very similar to what the Bridgestone tyre was like. At most circuits, its tyres would be quick to begin with over four or five laps then suffer from a bit of graining, which would clean up again after another four or five laps. Then they would be consistent until they basically wore out. This point would be down to the balance of the car and the circuit characteristics.
I'm pretty sure the teams will only be paying for the tyres that are allocated for the season and that Pirelli will be responsible for its own development budget. I doubt very much if any team will ever request a harder compound than we had available in 2017.
Pirelli claims F1 cars will be two seconds per lap faster this year - where is all that performance coming from? Doesn't it suggest all teams did a bad job with their 2017 cars? How can you tell what potential there is for improvement under a set of rules?
Mark Oliveira, via email
As a rule of thumb, a team's in-season development would be based on improving its car's performance by a tenth of a second per race. At some races there might be nothing introduced, at others there might be a reasonable update.
So with 20 races, this equals two seconds of improvement over the season. From Australia 2017 to Australia 2018, we should see roughly a two-second improvement.
No one did a bad job last year, but with new regulations it's almost impossible to arrive at the first race with the car optimised. So, during the 2017 season, we saw many updates.
But since many of them were introduced for different circuits, it's always difficult to see how much those updates were worth. Only the teams know that, and now Pirelli has had that info - true or not, it has to react to it.
This improved lap time will be coming from higher downforce levels giving increased corner speeds, reduced drag improving top speeds, and a little fiddle with the ERS improving its harnessing and dissipation of electrical energy.
Other than the loads on the tyre structure increasing slightly, Pirelli should have nothing to worry about. The increase in downforce and changes to a softer compound will just reduce the surface sliding. This ought to reduce the surface temperature, which should help the durability of the tyre as it did from 2016 to 2017.
If you were technical director at Toro Rosso, what would you be expecting from Honda this season and how would you go about establishing the kind of working relationship you keep saying was missing with McLaren?
David Bates, via email
As far as I'm aware, Honda intends to develop the package with which it finished 2017. This is a positive step, because Honda understands which direction it needs to take to get more from it in both in terms of outright power and reliability.
If I were at Toro Rosso, I would be backing this decision and pushing for Honda to put its main focus in getting on top of any potential reliability problems. If it can do that then it will allow Honda the running time to get the maximum out of the existing package.
It will also allow Toro Rosso to compare its 2017 performance with the Renault to its 2018 performance with the Honda. This will be vital to allow both organisations to set a development direction.
My biggest worry would be that it is now going through a management change with project leader Yusuke Hasagwa's position being replaced by two new roles. A change in this area can be disruptive, but from what I know from working with the Japanese, everyone close to the project would have been fully briefed, so hopefully my worries would be unfounded.
When I was working with Honda back in 1998, all the design and development work was carried out in Japan, and as far as Honda was concerned it had built the best engine in F1.
The fact that it was some 60bhp down on the Peugeot we'd run the previous season was irrelevant. To Honda that was European horsepower and not Japanese horsepower!
Honda believes everything it does is better than what is being done over here in Europe, and sometimes this impression has to be corrected. Honda won't do it within its own group, since they don't want to hurt each other's feelings, so it falls to an outsider to intervene.
Honda sets a plan and that's the direction it is going in. If it's the correct direction, then it's like a snowball going down a hill and nothing can stop it. If it's not the correct direction, then the level of effort and momentum remains the same - only the outcome is less optimal. Nothing within the organisation can stop it, so someone from outside needs to step in with the information required and point out the facts.
In my case it took me four one-day trips to Tokyo, but when Honda bought into what I was saying, it put a plan together overnight, showed it to me the next day, and then went off and achieved it. An update of over 20bhp arrived for the British Grand Prix and that trend continued for the rest of the season.
When Honda identifies what's required (and that's by no means guaranteed) then it has the knowledge, the budget and the commitment to meet the challenge.
With the halo coming in this year, what advantages in terms of cars performance can we expect?
Tono Villalobos, via email
I think what you mean is what 'disadvantages' can we expect from the cars performance!
Any additional weight will slow the cars down - 10kg is equivalent to a loss of roughly three-tenths of a second. An additional disadvantage is that since this component is so high up, it will raise the centre of gravity much more than 10kg of fuel would. So the penalty will probably be that little bit more.
The FIA has upped the minimum weight limit for 2018 by 6kg, but that is not enough and with the extra structures required in the chassis 10kg would be more realistic.
If the teams were struggling to get to the minimum weight limit in 2017, they must find other areas to reduce the weight otherwise they will have a performance disadvantage from the off.
So far as aerodynamics are concerned, yes there will be a deficit but it will be negligible. I'm sure most teams will overcome this with the fairings they can fit around the halo.
Instead of a wing-style fairing, perhaps we'll see a dimpled surface just like a golf ball to minimise its variation in the positioning of the wake coming off its trailing edge.
Who and why do you expect to be the best Renault-powered team? Red Bull, Renault or McLaren?
Oliver Lee, via email
It should be Red Bull, and if not it will have really screwed up. Renault is still in a team-building phase, but in much better shape than at the start of 2017. McLaren should come out of the start gates strong, but will need time to get on top of how to get the best from the new package.
Red Bull started 2017 poorly, and as the season progressed its performance got better. But the reliability suffered, so for 2018 it needs to start in better shape and finish races.
Renault finished the season strongly with Nico Hulkenberg qualifying and racing well in Abu Dhabi. Again, it needs to start where if left off and ensure the car is reliable.
I've criticised McLaren during 2017 for not running its car with the best aerodynamic drag to horsepower compromise. It will need to be on top of that this year, because I certainly don't expect the Renault to be the best power unit package in the pitlane.
Will the F1 competition be closer in 2018?
Stuart Dow, via Facebook
Sorry, but I don't really see what is going to make that happen. The powerhouses - Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull - know that only the best they can do will allow them to challenge for a world championship.
So they'll be pushing in every possible direction to find that extra performance. After all, they've got the budget to back that up, which means that the smaller teams either must get seriously lucky or fall further behind.
We can all dream that the top three teams from 2017 screw up, allowing the smaller teams to be the frontrunners. But usually we wake up before the dream is over to find that the big teams have just spent their way out of any trouble in time to dispose of the smaller teams before it gets too embarrassing.
We can but live in hope.
You often hear references to design concepts. Can you explain in a bit more detail what you mean by a design concept - could you group different cars in various categories of concepts from 2017? And what concept do you expect teams to move towards in 2018?
Daniel Fischer, via email
The design concept is based on where you think your research will take you. You don't start creating one of these cars with a rectangular block and carve it out while sitting on the porch.
You must start with a concept that you believe will pay dividends as you go through the optimisation process. When you first start your aerodynamic research, the car is probably 15-20% away from where you will end up.
The big teams have the structure and the budget to go down as many avenues as required, and are pretty confident one of those areas will generate results. But they still have to start somewhere. I've always likened the process to arriving at a roundabout without a map - you want to get to the seaside but have no idea which way to go.
The big teams have the resource to explore every exit of the roundabout, and because they can do this they will end up at their desired destination.
As for the small teams, they need to get out of the car and have a sniff of the air, and hopefully from that they can pick the correct road. If they do that, they can then do as good a job as the big boys. If not, it will be a season of frustration because very few of them have the budget to have another go at it.
Grouping the 2017 cars, I would put Ferrari in its box by optimising the short wheelbase, Mercedes by going for a longer wheelbase, and Red Bull for using the high-rake concept.
The others are all in there somewhere, but none of them have gone far enough to push one concept to the maximum. It's like the power units and the way Mercedes made the split-turbo work to its advantage, while other manufacturers tried different ideas before realising they had to take that route as well. It all starts with someone believing in where any given package will give them the biggest rewards, and it never simply works from day one - it takes a lot of belief and research.
Do you think Mercedes will change its design philosophy now Ferrari has got so close?
Chris Smith, via Facebook
I'm sure Mercedes will have evaluated what it ran in 2017 against the particular sidepod configuration and shorter wheelbase that Ferrari used, and the high-rake concept Red Bull opted for.
But let's not forget that Mercedes had the fastest car over last season. Yes, it wasn't as good as the Ferrari on the slow-speed, high-downforce tracks, and probably not as good as Red Bull on the higher-speed circuits with slow corners where wing downforce could be trimmed off to improve efficiency.
As Red Bull showed after its four consecutive drivers' and constructors' championships, it's not easy to keep a run of success going. Yes, it had its Renault problems in 2014, but keeping up the momentum as a team is tough, even though Mercedes seems to go about its business in a fairly relaxed state.
The 2018 car will be the first that James Allison will have been directly involved in from the start, so it will be interesting to see what he adds to the group. I don't think we'll see a huge change of direction - probably just a little bit of what Ferrari had and a little bit of what Red Bull had - and I'm sure this will be true of all three teams.
Time usually means that everyone ends up with more or less the same result.
Do you think that Pirelli's many new tyre compounds are truly necessary for better racing? Surely these new compounds increase production costs and therefore tyre fees to teams at a time when we're still talking about cost-cutting?
Jon Chui-Rapley, via Facebook
I don't think they need as many tyres as they've presented. A softer step is necessary, perhaps even two steps, but I'm sure they didn't need the hardest - I doubt very much if we'll ever see it in competition.
The philosophy of the tyres needs to change. We don't need or want this surface-overheating degradation that we observe and which the drivers complain about and have to drive within. We just want tyres that can be driven flat-out, and then when they lose enough rubber they just can't retain the tyre temperature and over a lap or two the performance falls off the cliff.
With this style of tyre characteristics, you would get someone trying to make it to the end of a stint or the race and the performance dropping off two or three laps before the end.
This is very similar to what the Bridgestone tyre was like. At most circuits, its tyres would be quick to begin with over four or five laps then suffer from a bit of graining, which would clean up again after another four or five laps. Then they would be consistent until they basically wore out. This point would be down to the balance of the car and the circuit characteristics.
I'm pretty sure the teams will only be paying for the tyres that are allocated for the season and that Pirelli will be responsible for its own development budget. I doubt very much if any team will ever request a harder compound than we had available in 2017.
Pirelli claims F1 cars will be two seconds per lap faster this year - where is all that performance coming from? Doesn't it suggest all teams did a bad job with their 2017 cars? How can you tell what potential there is for improvement under a set of rules?
Mark Oliveira, via email
As a rule of thumb, a team's in-season development would be based on improving its car's performance by a tenth of a second per race. At some races there might be nothing introduced, at others there might be a reasonable update.
So with 20 races, this equals two seconds of improvement over the season. From Australia 2017 to Australia 2018, we should see roughly a two-second improvement.
No one did a bad job last year, but with new regulations it's almost impossible to arrive at the first race with the car optimised. So, during the 2017 season, we saw many updates.
But since many of them were introduced for different circuits, it's always difficult to see how much those updates were worth. Only the teams know that, and now Pirelli has had that info - true or not, it has to react to it.
This improved lap time will be coming from higher downforce levels giving increased corner speeds, reduced drag improving top speeds, and a little fiddle with the ERS improving its harnessing and dissipation of electrical energy.
Other than the loads on the tyre structure increasing slightly, Pirelli should have nothing to worry about. The increase in downforce and changes to a softer compound will just reduce the surface sliding. This ought to reduce the surface temperature, which should help the durability of the tyre as it did from 2016 to 2017.