Are Mercedes beatable over a race weekend? Let’s investigate…
Mercedes have comprehensively outclassed the opposition in the first year and a half into the new V6 turbo era and have shown to be virtually unbeatable in normal racing conditions, more so this season. A Mercedes didn’t feature on the top step of the podium in Hungary but rather their closest rivals, on speed, Ferrari. Sebastian Vettel’s triumph implied that the Silver cars are beatable after all. There have been familiar patterns of recent that have worked against them and it only seems fitting, as Formula 1 emerges out of its summer break and back into action, we look into those patterns in a bit more depth.
Race Starts
The proverbial saying that races are decided at the first corner couldn’t be any truer.
Both Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have been beaten off the line in the last two races, by the Williams cars at Silverstone and the Ferraris at Hungary. Whilst Mercedes have had the beating of them on sheer race pace in clean air they have somewhat struggled in traffic and demoting their rivals back down the order instantly has been more of a problem, unlike last year. A clear example of this was Hamilton having to undercut both Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas at the end of the first stint at Silverstone to take the race lead and eventual race win. It took a change in weather conditions later for Rosberg to leapfrog both Williams and make it a Mercedes 1-2.
As much as Mercedes managed to overcome their poor start in Silverstone and were helped by Williams not prioritising their quickest driver, the same couldn’t be said in Hungary in a race where both Hamilton and Rosberg made crucial errors and Kimi Raikkonen acted as a rear gunner for Vettel to put some distance between himself and the frontrunners and control the race. Even so, Rosberg found it difficult to put pressure on Raikkonen except for when the latter encountered a power unit problem.
Having said that, the case can be made that although Mercedes are further ahead the likes of Williams and Red Bull, who were their closest rivals last year, the gap between them and the biggest challengers this year in the resurgent Ferrari is a tiny bit smaller as in Hungary they were beaten on “raw” speed without either Mercedes driver being hurt by reliability, changeable weather conditions or having alternative race strategies from other teams coming into play.
It seems as though this season Mercedes, knowing they have a clear performance advantage, have adopted Red Bull’s strategy of executing their race starts and making their cars more effective in clear air to break away from the field in the early stages of the race and then settle into the rhythm when they were dominating the sport. This is done with the consequence of having more drag on the car and, therefore, is ill-suited for situations where they have to overtake cars ahead. A sign of a bit too much confidence in their drivers and machinery? Perhaps. And teams improving their performances on a Saturday could be a useful way of making Mercedes’ Sundays a bit more harder than they are.
If Mercedes were not to get on top of their poor race starts starting from today’s race as they lock out the front row for the 9th occasion this season, particularly where for the first time drivers will receive limited assistance from teams on adjusting clutch settings for a race start, then it can spell greater problems.
Tyres
The harder rubber, namely the medium and hard compounds, would be the Mercedes’ favourite types of tyre if they were asked to give a preference as their superior aero allows the W06 to generate temperature into the tyres and exploit them quicker than the rest of the field. However the theory behind that is the soft and super-soft tyres on the other spectrum present a potential issue for Mercedes that could leave them caught out in that they don’t extract as big of an advantage as other teams when putting on the softer compound in races with the softest rubber involved, such as Monaco and Austria. Additionally the theory behind that can be backed up by Ferrari taking advantage of their favoured hot conditions (which would allow them to exploit greater car performance) in Malaysia to take a shock win earlier in the season.
It shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence that the only non-Mercedes pole position since the inception of the new engine formula was with the softest tyres in play (Austria last year) and Williams as the opportunists were quick enough to take advantage of any Mercedes’ hiccups on that Saturday.
Drivers can also attempt an audaciously long stint in the middle of a Grand Prix, allowing them to gain access to fresher tyres than the Silver cars in front, leaving the latter more wary of an attack in the later stages of the race. Mission accomplished with the help of Ferrari once in Bahrain, as Raikkonen did just that in pressuring Rosberg towards the end of the race before the Mercedes driver was hit with a brake-by-wire issue and conceded 2nd to Raikkonen on the penultimate lap of the race. This, of course, depends on whether a car is quick and efficient enough (like the Ferrari was) to open up an alternative strategy of such.
Shorter, Tighter, Twisty track layout
Shorter. Tighter. Twisty. I’m saying that with a punch in the air every time; a shorter layout means that Mercedes wouldn’t be able to utilise their car to make up a lot of lap time because of the short lap, putting drivers in more of a primed position to make the difference in lap time; a tighter and twisty track will not typically greet drivers with a lot of overtaking opportunities, and any poor start (as per discussed above) from a Mercedes car would leave it punished for at least a chunk of a race until the succeeding round of pitstops, but even so traffic on an out or in-lap is likely to interfere with race strategy more so than on another track.
The truest, most traditional epitome of such a track is Monaco, where this year Vettel was able to keep tabs on Rosberg throughout the entirety of the race, circulating the streets of Monte Carlo whilst Hamilton disappeared far off into the distance, before the Ferrari driver benefited from the strategically wrong pit-stop Hamilton made during the safety car period and was able to follow consequential race winner Rosberg in moving ahead of Hamilton, thus splitting the two Mercedes as a result. Plus Mercedes were pushed hard in qualifying at Singapore last year although ultimately clinched a front row lockout.
Hungary provides a stronger piece of evidence, with Mercedes having only one win at the Hungaroring and that was with Hamilton in 2013 and have yet to conquer the circuit in the current form of dominance they hold with the generation of cars that are present as of now, as well as being the circuit where they were knocked off the podium for the first time since the Brazilian Grand Prix in 2013 and out of the top five since the Japanese Grand Prix in that same year.
I type the last words of this article as I watch the buildup to the race start at Spa, a place where drama and unpredictability is a common sight as seen last year at Mercedes’ expense. Somewhere Mercedes are beatable? We’ll see..
