It was a busy day for three teams who pulled the covers off their 2016 challengers in very different ways. Ferrari had an online launch to promote the SF16-H and it’s new livery - with yet more white creeping in to the iconic red paint scheme. Team boss Maurizio Arrivabene said: “I think this year we need to push a bit more. We’d like to fight until the end for the championship.”

The Red Bull team had their 2016 F1 launch today, or what seems to be passing for a launch this year, as they unveiled the new colours their two drivers will be racing in, and very little else. The paint scheme is a toned down version of last year, thanks to changes in sponsorship. Now that they’re running a Renault engine without advertising the fact, they have removed the purple Infiniti logos, replacing them with a bigger text Red Bull logo instead.

Mercedes reserve driver Pascal Wehrlein has been waiting in the wings of the Formula One paddock for a few years now, and the German driver finally gets his chance to step up in 2016. He’s signed to Manor Racing for one year, their first driver announcement for the season so far. The deal surrounds the engine supply Manor will receive from Mercedes, but the team will also be granted use of Mercedes’ wind tunnel at Brackley for the year as well.

Red Bull and Toro Rosso both ended their power unit supply deal with Renault at the end of last year, and whilst Red Bull found themselves struggling to find a new supplier after turning Ferrari down, Toro Rosso were happy to return to Italian power. Toro Rosso have run with Ferrari engines previously, up until 2013 when they switched to Renault.

Renault unveiled their full 2016 F1 line-up during a launch in Paris today, confirming Kevin Magnussen alongside Jolyon Palmer for the upcoming season, with Esteban Ocon as reserve driver. The covers were pulled off Renault’s car, showcased in a black livery with yellow accents, but the team did suggest it wasn’t the finished version of the RS16.

Renault’s Cyril Abiteboul has said that the power unit token system, that was designed to limit the amount of upgrades any one manufacturer made to their engine, will be scrapped from next season onwards. The system was brought in last year and was intended to have a descending number of tokens each season to help curb costs but keep things competitive.

Along with revealing their 2016 driver line-up and branding, Renault Sport also announced a new initiative – the Renault Sport Academy, tasked with “finding future Renault Sport champions.” There are plenty of young driver programmes out there, and Renault are striving to add a little bit something extra to theirs.

There have been rumblings for a few weeks now but Pastor Maldonado has taken the step of announcing his own departure from Renault F1, and Formula One as a whole, for now at least. Pastor’s future had been under increasing speculation due to the fact his sponsor, PDVSA, was struggling to meet required payments.

Not content with bringing on board ex-Ferrari designer Nikolas Tombazis, Manor GP have continued to scoop ex-Scuderia staff by signing up engineering director Pat Fry as a consultant for the 2016 season. The team are gradually picking up the pieces from what is left of Marussia’s efforts, and will now have Fry’s expertise to help them out.

It’s a familiar story, the McLaren-Honda partnership failing to complete their testing programmes. This time, the team were participating in Pirelli’s two-day wet tyre test, along with Red Bull and Ferrari. The cars and engines in use were 2015-spec which goes some way to explaining why McLaren found themselves with power unit problems cutting one of their day short.