Everything you want and need to know about the 2018 Formula One season

The 2018 Formula One season is nearly here, and we have everything you need to know going into what is shaping up to be a very exciting campaign. It all starts on March 25 with the Australian Grand Prix, and will run all the way through November.

Once again, Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes is the favorite to win another Drivers’ Championship. Along with teammate Valtteri Bottas, he is expected to deliver the Constructors’ Championship to the Germany-based team.

Mercedes dominance may have been slightly less total in 2017 than in 2016, but that didn’t prevent more Mercedes titles. The stronger-than-expected performance of Ferrari last year as well as the exceptional aero of the Red Bull cars kept things close on certain tracks. Coupled with Hamilton’s own inconsistency, that made for multiple non-Mercedes race winners in 2017.

Going into the 2018 season, Red Bull is expected to be even closer to Mercedes in the standings as Renault has doubled down on its commitment to the sport. After this season, Red Bull has to make a decision on whether or not it will continue its relationship with Renault. How close Red Bull is to Mercedes should go a long way toward making that decision.

Red Bull drivers Daniel Ricciardo and young gun Max Verstappen are hoping they can not only push Hamilton and Bottas, but also decisively beat Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen. Ferrari didn’t look great in preseason testing, but the drivers and the team remain confident they will be in the running.

For their part, Hamilton and Bottas have both said that it will likely be a three-team race at the front of the pack this season. Obviously, other teams are hoping to be in that mix, but F1 is a series fought in groups more often than naught.

McLaren — powered by Renault after a nearly comedic series of Honda engine failures and other reliability issues in 2017 — hopes to contend as well, but still figures to be a step behind Red Bull’s car, at least initially.

Honda will keep on trying after a 2017 that nearly forced superstar driver Fernando Alonso — widely considered the best technical driver in F1 -- into retirement. Alonso is still with McLaren, and believes strongly that the Renault engine will perform better than the Honda from 2017. With Honda supplying engines for Toro Rosso, it will be extremely interesting to see what Pierre Gasly and Brendon Hartley can do.

Will Toro Rosso be up there with McLaren? Or will they be battling Haas, Williams, and Sauber, teams using Ferrari, Mercedes, and Ferrari engines, respectively? Haas F1 Team remains the only American-owned team, and they are looking to take some steps forward in their third year of F1 competition.

It will also be interesting to see where Force India and Williams place in general, due to new rules requiring engine manufacturer Mercedes to supply customer teams with the same exact spec engine it use on its own team.

Below, we’re going to go into detail on the changes for 2018, including:

On top of that, we’ve got ...

One of the biggest design changes the sport has seen in a very long time arrives in 2018 with the addition of the “halo.” This is a wishbone-shaped driver safety device installed in the cockpit around and above the driver’s head. The controversial addition is designed to prevent drivers from losing visibility while also maintaining an open cockpit.

Driver safety should be the most important area of improvement each and every year, and the halo device is a step in the right direction. It is intended to protect drivers from being struck in the head by debris without interfering with the ability of safety marshals to access the cockpit to extract the driver in the event of an emergency.

Most drivers lobbied for some kind of solution to protect their own heads from flying debris on the race track, but many have also complained about the aesthetics of the halo. Many fans are also worried that the sport is getting closer to a closed cockpit.

After a disastrous 2017 campaign, McLaren terminated its engine partnership with Honda, and signed up for power units supplied by Renault. Toro Rosso moved on from Renault — which created room for McLaren to do the aforementioned deal — and will use Honda power units in 2018 despite massive reliability issues a season ago.

Sauber — now carrying the sponsorship from Alfa Romeo — renewed its contract with Ferrari, and will use current-spec power units for 2018, a step up from the year-old power units they were using in 2017. That should make Sauber much more competitive this season.

Red Bull proper is now Aston Martin Red Bull Racing, and the team is still using a TAG Heuer-branded Renault power unit.

As part of the deal that allowed Toro Rosso to use Honda engines and Red Bull to continue using the TAG Heuer-branded Renault engine, the team loaned driver Carlos Sainz Jr. to Renault’s team. Sainz took the spot of Jolyon Palmer, joining Nico Hulkenberg at Renault.

Toro Rosso signed Gasly, the 2016 GP2 Series champion, and Hartley, a two-time World Endurance champion, to be their full-time drivers for 2018. Pascal Wehrlein is out at Sauber, and is now a Mercedes test and reserve driver. Charles Leclerc takes his spot at Sauber, alongside Marcus Ericsson.

Felipe Massa re-retired after coming out of retirement in 2017 to drive for Williams when Bottas was shifted to Mercedes. Bottas remains with Mercedes, behind Hamilton, while Williams will go forward with Lance Stroll and SMP Racing driver Sergey Sirotkin.

Below you can see a list of drivers for each team as well as the engine and chassis designation for 2018:

The first F1 race aired in the U.S. was on ABC in 1962, but the television home for the sport has been NBC since 2013. But NBC elected not to enter into a new agreement with Liberty Media, the new owners of F1 as of last season. Instead, it will return to the ABC family of networks, being broadcast on ABC, ESPN, and ESPN2 throughout the 2018 season.

For the majority of races, ESPN2 will be the go-to channel, with a few races airing on ESPN and the biggest — the United States and Mexican Grands Prix — set for ABC. As usual, ESPN will offer live streaming off its television broadcasts via ESPN3/WatchESPN in web browsers and through the ESPN App on various connected devices.

ESPN’s coverage will be a simulcast of the Sky Sports F1 coverage, widely considered to be the best coverage of the sport that exists. However, it’s expected to have commercial breaks, as NBC did, though there is no word on exactly how frequent they will be or how they will be used with online streaming.

In addition, F1 itself is now offering its own over the top (OTT) live streaming service known as F1 TV. At its lowest level, the subscription-based service offers live timing, race replays, an extensive backlog of races, and other information. F1 TV Pro, a more expensive option, will offer live streaming of all practices sessions, qualifying sessions, and races in several languages.

The French Grand Prix is back, for the first time since 2008. It will return to the Circuit Paul Ricard, which was last home to an F1 race in 1990. Every race after that was held at the Circuit de Nevers Magny-Cours.

After a one-year absence, the German Grand Prix is also back, with the race being held at the Hockenheimring. The Malaysian Grand Prix has been a part of the F1 calendar since 1999, but will not be held this year (nor is it likely to be held in the near future).

The Russian Grand Prix was moved back from April to September to account for the absence of the Malaysian race, while the Azerbaijan Grand Prix was moved forward to April to accommodate the addition of the race in France and so as not to interfere with the centenary celebration of the Azerbaijan republic.

The start times of most European races were pushed back one hour in hopes to increase viewership in certain countries. And races will start 10 minutes past the hour so networks not having dedicated pre-race shows will have time to do some talking before the cars get going.