Seems? It iskomninosm wrote:So does anyone else think 3 seconds a lap is too much?
I mean I'm a Mercedes and a Hamilton fan, but it seems more than Red Bull even.
I agree that the races and the championship still has the potential of being close despite Mercedes advantage, since Hamilton and Rosberg are at the same level. But I am a bit worried. We have already discussed the strategies, but even if Rosberg's strategy wasn't much slower than Hamilton's, don't you think it mattered at all for Mercedes that they were able to avoid close, risky battles by running different strategies? When Rosberg had his first go at Hamilton and was forced off the track, he came on the radio and said: "Warn him, that was not on!" And the kind of close racing we saw for the last couple of laps of the first stint and the first laps after safety car, was very exciting for us, but probably very uncomfortable for the top Mercedes people to watch, as that kind of aggressiveness that we saw from Lewis does not come without risk. We have all seen Hamilton making contact with others in situations like that. Happily for Mercedes, Rosberg yielded every time that he had to. My concern is that Mercedes will ruin the excitement. In Bahrain they were about to do it through the strategies, but failed because of the safety car. Next time I don't know what they will do.Phil wrote:I can only speak for myself, but the dominance of Redbull was rather tiring because we precisely didn't see much fighting for the win. What is exciting now, is that either Mercedes driver are both on it and battling for the win - something we rarely saw in 2011 for instance and less in 2013 (both years where Vettel/Redbull was extremely dominant). It would have helped if Vettel had to fight for wins more.
I guess it's more "how someone won" than the pure fact of him winning that's important to me. Winning under pressure is what ends up being memorable for me. Nothing against Vettel, but I think a lot of people would probably respect him more if they felt that he really had to work for his wins against a strong team-mate. This was the case in 2010 (despite the team-orders etc), but watching Vettel win that season was memorable, because he precisely had to fight for it (even if I was rooting for Webber).
I hope it's going to be like that, but the situation is fundamentally different. In 09, Teams had to find downforce to match the BGP. This year, Mercedes has a 2 secs advantage mostly on engine. RedBull has a similarly good chassis, but the engine is not on par (software and hardware I believe).lebesset wrote:I expect this season to play out as another 2009 , the drivers at mercedes are good enough to exploit their advantage while it lasts so that , although the championships look to be theirs , we can expect some tough competition from ferrari and renault engined cars as the season progresses
I wouldn't say it was entirely down to the engine performance. There is engine integration, software application, Energy recovery systems, cooling requirements, and also the new brake by wire system which alot of teams have thus far struggled with. Mercedes have just done a better job in all the categories which makes the sum of it's parts appear massive.Mandrake wrote: I hope it's going to be like that, but the situation is fundamentally different. In 09, Teams had to find downforce to match the BGP. This year, Mercedes has a 2 secs advantage mostly on engine. RedBull has a similarly good chassis, but the engine is not on par (software and hardware I believe).
With too limited testing and frozen engine hardware, I do not think that we will see a change in the fight for the lead for the rest of the season. Will the rest get closer? Probably. Will Merc be challenged for the win? Only if they struggle technically...
as you say , RBR already has a similarly good chassis , maybe even betterMandrake wrote:I hope it's going to be like that, but the situation is fundamentally different. In 09, Teams had to find downforce to match the BGP. This year, Mercedes has a 2 secs advantage mostly on engine. RedBull has a similarly good chassis, but the engine is not on par (software and hardware I believe).lebesset wrote:I expect this season to play out as another 2009 , the drivers at mercedes are good enough to exploit their advantage while it lasts so that , although the championships look to be theirs , we can expect some tough competition from ferrari and renault engined cars as the season progresses
With too limited testing and frozen engine hardware, I do not think that we will see a change in the fight for the lead for the rest of the season. Will the rest get closer? Probably. Will Merc be challenged for the win? Only if they struggle technically...
I think that really hits home the advantage. They are just so much faster, with less drop off from tyres as well. I think it may actually be too much for any one team to catch up over the season, especially considering Merc will be developing at a similar, or slightly slower pace as well.BlackSwan wrote:Hi, I think that this graph is pretty impressive :O
https://twitter.com/piusgasso/status/454328602335928321
Much more?? How much more???thomin wrote:Also, remember that Rosberg had much more fuel in hand compared to Hamilton.
So much more that he had to go at lengths to burn it behind the safety car as he wouldn't have been able to use it.sAx wrote:Much more?? How much more???thomin wrote:Also, remember that Rosberg had much more fuel in hand compared to Hamilton.
I agree. Webber was always 0.2 tenths down (maybe more) just by his weight difference with Vettel.lebesset wrote:call me a cynic , but I often wondered if webber was kept because he was disadvantaged just the right amount by his size ie not enough to risk the constructors championship