It would come to be widely copied by almost everyone over the coming years but was very much part of the SF70H’s downforce advantage over the Mercedes in slow and medium speed corners. Progressive thinking was evident in the unique way the sidepods were pared back from the side-impact structures, opening up a lot of airflow-enhancing volume in that part of the car.
The Ferrari was a more driveable car than the Mercedes, more lithe and responsive in its behaviour into slow corners – and also generally better on the tyres This was the year of the big regulation change to wide, more aerodynamically powerful, cars and associated wider tyres.įerrari’s response to the new regulations was highly innovative and represented a clean sheet reappraisal of its aero concept (though incorporating the Red Bull-inspired high-rake route it had already been following). The step change in every metric comes in 2017. Its qualifying advantage over the next fastest car over the year was in 2018 a mere tenth of what it had been in ’14. Qual gap = The time gap from Mercedes to the second-fastest car in qualifying across the season, converted to a percentageĪs can be seen, Mercedes from having the uncontested fastest car at 100% of the races in 2014 was down to just a third of that by 2018. But in the case of 2018, for example, the Mercedes has been assessed as the fastest on race day on seven occasions, compared to eight for Ferrari, four for Red Bull and two too close to call. Sometimes it was less than resoundingly clear, in which case no call has been made. The following numbers give a sense of the scale of Mercedes’ reduced advantage in ’17-18 from its 2014-16 dominance: Yearįastest = The ‘race fastest’ category is an assessment of which car had the best race day pace at each event, to give an additional metric of performance. Is this just another run-through of that narrative? One in which the might of Mercedes prevails in the end? It was comfortably outpaced in qualifying and won the opening race only through a combination of a smart strategy, a calculating drive from Lewis Hamilton and some significant mechanical problems for Max Verstappen’s Red Bull-Honda.īut it’s not the first time, even during its title obliteration of the hybrid era, that Mercedes has started the season on an ambiguous footing.Īt the beginning of both 2017 and ’18 it faced a resurgent Ferrari that looked to have the potential to break its dominance. Naturally it’s big news that the all-conquering Mercedes team has got its 2021 Formula 1 campaign off to such a tricky start, Bahrain victory notwithstanding.