decade of new turbo power.This manifested itself particularly at
the slower circuits.
Mercedes being Mercedes we could not expect any weaknessto
last long. The foremost exponent of marginal gains and incremental
performance was not about to allow such a major deficiency to
carry on indefinitely, and I have no doubtthat huge resource was
ploughed into the solution. Whatever the teamfoun d, it appears
to have been successful and while the gap to its rivals might have
changed in magnitude from circuit to circuit, ithas al ways been
positive. Even at Barcelona, where Ferrari appeared to outperform
Mercedes in pre-seasontesting, Mercedes cameback strongly with
a magic lap from Bottas over 1% faster than
Mercedes’ perceived nemesis.
But what of the challengers? Ferrari’s
pre-season form flattered to deceive. Its
straightline speed was widely putdown to
an improved power unit, which perhaps
even exceeded the performance of the
long-dominant Mercedes unit. In reality,
acceleration data showed thetwo engines to
be very evenly matched and the prodigious
terminal speed of the Ferrari had more
to do with lower drag than higher power.
The 5km/h difference seen in typical
terminal speeds would have required a
further 50bhp on a car with equal drag, but
if we assumethe power units to be equal
it could also be achieved with around five
points lessdrag. Now, if we assume the twoINSIDER
PATSYMONDS
UNDER
THE
HOOD
It’s traditional atthis time of year to takestock
and comment on the relative performance of the
teams. Quite often, particularly overthe past few
seasons, we’ve been looking at a dominant team,
but not since the reversion to just ten outfits have
we seen the zenith and the nadir of performance
so firmly anchored race after race.
We havegot u sed, since 2014,to seein g
Mercedes dominate, but fansof unpredictable
outcomeshave always held outhope thata
weakness in theteam’s impressively solidarmo ur
might show. Indeed, in 2014 Re d Bull and even
Williams challenged Mercedes from time to time,
and sincethen Ferrari has mounted achallenge
and Red Bull stolen some wins. But thefact is,prior
to 2019,Mercedes hadwon 74% of therace s in the
hybrid era and scored 66% ofthe available points.
Interestingly we cancompa re this with
Manchester City’s record infootball’s Premier
Leaguewher e, over the past fiveseasons,it has
won 68%of its matches and obtained 74% ofthe
ava ilable points. The difference, apart fromthe
obvious variances inthe scoring systems(you
can’t come third in a football match),is that
while Mercedes hasbeen rewarded with every
championshipover that period, Manchester City
has only won twoof the past five domestic titles.
Mercedes hadits wea knesses. The difficulty of
always getting the sensi tive Pirelli tyresinto the
optimum operating temperature windowpre-dated
the hybrid era and continued into the first half-DOMINATION IS
STILL THE N AME
OF THE GAME
PICTURES:ANDYHONE;DIRK KLYNSMITH;STEVEN TEE.ILLUSTRATION:BENJAMINWACHENJE@F1Racing_mag
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f1racingmagPICTURES26 F1 RACING AUGUST 2019
Mercedeshasdominated
thehybrideraandthis
seasonisnodifferent