What rumours about Ferrari Chev?
Rumours? Nothing juicy that I know of, they've been a bit more subdued during testing this year. Last year they did a crap job of masking their pace (Seb's infamous jamming on the anchors before the finish line to lose lap time was a bit daft and quite obvious), though the media wouldn't take them seriously at the time, even if Mercedes did. The car itself is radical, probably the most radical of all the 2018 cars, and the biggest step change over last year. The increase in wheelbase was probably a smart move; why trade being dominant at 3 races (Monaco, Hungary and Singapore) when you can be on the money everywhere and struggle nowhere. It was about playing the long game rather than trying to score max points at a select few tight and twisty tracks.
One clever idea was the wing mirrors; there might be a very minimal advantage to be had from using mirror housings as aero surfaces, but the regulations don't prohibit it.
As a way of grabbing and channeling air that would otherwise merely get buffeted around the mirror and head toward the rear wing eventually, it's a neat way of doing something with the surface area available to you. The side pods are even more complex than last year.
More so than last year, I think this is Seb's chance for title number 5, and if it's reliable (3 engines to last a year is a big ask for all the teams, 40% more mileage is a chunk), it'll a monster of a car without the weaknesses of last season and improved in areas of inherent strength.
Haas had a similar test regime to Ferrari, they didn't make much noise but they diligently went about testing, and the car itself is rather similar to the Ferrari that finished last season (more so than was expected), but with the 2018 power unit. When you see Red Bull not able to make much progress on the engine front because Renault are twisting the knife[1], McLaren still struggling with reliability, Force India probably reaching their ceiling and Williams seemingly in the abyss, there's a real chance of them being placed 3rd or 4th at the end of the year. Torro Rosse might spring a surprise, especially since Honda appear to have a new lease of life in that partnership (though there's talk that they were changing power units every evening during testing).
Realistic expectations for Melbourne, Hamilton on pole, Vettel with a race win and all sorts of carnage on the reliability front further down the grid.
[1] There would always come a time when Horner and Newey's very public negativity of Renault came back to haunt them. There's no doubt the chassis is a cracker, but the weak link is the power unit, and I don't believe Renault have any interest in improving it for them. It's a business and not a sport as far as supply chain is concerned. It might be a difficult year