Can Red Bull repeat their 'summer 2013' uprising?

[FoxHound]

@Juzh

Ric was 4/10ths down at Monaco in a qualifying skewed by Rosberg's incident in the dying moments of the session.
Vettel was 6/10ths down.

Your suggestion Ricciardo was cruising in the race intimates that relative to the Mercs he could've gone quicker.
Yet we know 4/10ths was the original deficit, which could've been greater had Hamilton completed his final effort in Qualifying.
We also know Kimi Raikkonen set the fastest lap on lap 75, which can directly verify that if Ricciardo was cruising in the initial phase of the race, Mercedes too had been cruising toward the end by virtue of the Ferrari not being anywhere near as fast as the W05.
We also know that Hamilton could not see out his left eye. Around Monaco, that is nigh on lethal.
Rosberg knew Hamilton could not catch him in such circumstances, and held station.
Ricciardo had all to gain so was racing a one-eyed Hamilton to the flag.

If we look at Hungary, another of the less relevant tracks to engine power, we see that Mercedes had a gap of 7/10ths to Red Bull in qualifying.
If it all boiled down to the engine, all Mercedes powered teams would be in contention. Yet McLaren and Force India don't trouble Red Bull.

The gap in Canada qualifying to Red bull was 7/10ths too....what happened to all this engine power in Canada if the in Hungary the car maintained the gap?

At some point's this year, Mercedes have been around 1.7 to 2 seconds seconds quicker than McLaren in race and qualifying.
This in spite of them using the same PU.

If you look at this from any logical perspective, you'd conclude from the statistics available, that Mercedes W05 has chassis to match anything out there at present.

And today we have Lowe stating it clearly.

These cars are about system performance, not individual elements.
It's about how you put it all together. It's the power unit, the efficiency of the power unit, the aerodynamics, and the manner in which they're all put together. It's the collective efficiency of that package from a power, aero and suspension point of view, as well as a weight point of view. Our car is very quick. There are other cars running that power unit that aren't as quick, so it's a whole system.

[Jonnycraig]

Unless they can bolt a Mercedes engine in the car, no.

[henra]

This years title is starting to open up a small amount. Its not open by any stretch but over the last 5 races Daniel Ricciardo has scored more points than Lewis Hamilton and only 3 points less than Nico Rosberg. A big upgrade could make this still a fight.

They won't.
They will be working full steam on the 2015 car and be pressing Renault to make not only performance relevant changes but also packaging changes.
This year's titles are both gone and the problems are in all likelyhood related to fundamental (mostly PU) design/arrangement decisions which you can't change during the season.
Packaging was always a key strength of RB (and also the Renault PU) and was a key factor in their aerodynamic advantage. This year Merc is better in packaging. And that is mainly due to arrangement decisions of the PU and its related components. They are not allowed to do relevant changes in the area and on top it would be basically a complete re- design of the car. And all that in a seaason which is already lost anyway. It would make sense if there were other cars in the fight for the title but with no one else on the grid being able to grab Points from Merc in the remaining races they would basically have to win all remaining races and preferrably with a 1-2 to stand a chance. And that is not going to happen.

[SectorOne]

@Juzh

On top of that you have more or less proof that they only run flat out if they are threatened.
Rivals must be wondering what the hell is going on if there´s more cream they can just extract through some switches/setup.

Q: And if your rivals catch you, does that change how free Rosberg and Hamilton are to fight against each other?
TW: Yes, we have already started to change our approach when we saw how near Williams are. We don't need to push our cars to the absolute limit if we see our two cars have an advantage; they can still race each other on a level that still has a tiny bit of a security margin in terms of temperatures, pressures. You don't need to hit the car hard if you are only racing your team mate. So that is an approach we have changed and recalibrated after Spielberg. But in a situation like Spielberg where Williams are close you need to go flat out.