| Gary Anderson reviews F1 2014
AUTOSPORT's technical consultant looks back over the Formula 1 season, and explains why Mercedes' early dominance wasn't what really impressed him about the team
Everybody talks about how impressive it was that Mercedes was so far ahead at the start of the 2014 season. But I don't agree with that. At the start of the season Mercedes benefited because most other teams screwed up. What really impressed me was that by the end of the season Mercedes was still comfortably ahead and, by some measures, actually pulling away from the pack. In Australia, the best non-Mercedes qualifier was Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull, 0.3 per cent behind. In Abu Dhabi at the end of the year, the Williams of Valtteri Bottas that qualified third was almost 0.4 per cent behind. We keep hearing rumours about the big step the Mercedes engine package will take next year. That, and the fact that Mercedes was able to make significant aerodynamic gains during the 2014 season, would really worry me if I was running Red Bull or Ferrari.
It is too easy to overlook just how good a job Mercedes did during 2014. The foundations that led to its dominance this year were laid a long time ago by Ross Brawn. When he was recruiting well-respected senior technical personnel like Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis, people asked whether it was a question of too many cooks. But the structure was right and, with the focus on getting the team into a championship-winning position for the new regulations introduced this year, huge effort went into the 2014 car. Remember, Mercedes is a team that was underachieving only a few years ago. While there has been big investment, money does not automatically guarantee success. Mercedes deserves credit for the job it has done. After all, there was nothing stopping Ferrari or Red Bull-Renault doing the same. In the three races Mercedes didn't win, the defeats were only because something went wrong for it rather than the silver cars being outpaced. Every time, Daniel Ricciardo was the beneficiary. In Canada, it was because of ERS failures on both Mercedes; in Hungary, it was down to a combination of safety car timing and Lewis Hamilton's engine failure in qualifying; in Belgium it was the collision between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. But you only need two cars to make a race, and Hamilton and Rosberg kept us entertained all year. It was right that Hamilton won because, particularly in the closing stages of the year, he was the quicker driver in race conditions. But Rosberg did well to take it down to the wire. It always seemed that Hamilton had things more under control. I regularly watched trackside during the season, and while Rosberg was often having to hustle the car, Hamilton was letting the Mercedes do all the work. It seemed that Hamilton had a real understanding of what the car could do, how much grip it had, whereas Rosberg was feeling his way. Perhaps that was an advantage for Rosberg in qualifying, allowing him to get the tyres up to temperature more quickly, but this was at the heart of Hamilton's advantage in the race. Not only was it quicker over long runs, but also gave him a small advantage in terms of fuel use.
Given the superiority Mercedes had, the rest just needed to make the best of it. Ricciardo was the star driver, not just for his three wins. He outperformed Sebastian Vettel over the season, and had a driving style that worked very well with these cars - able to carry good speed into the corners and not work the tyres too hard. Williams really should have been able to pick up at least one of the lost Mercedes wins, but while it was the best non-Mercedes finisher more often than Red Bull, this didn't happen in the right races. Even so, under Pat Symonds and with Rob Smedley joining the team in April, the turnaround from last year was remarkable. If you look at the Williams development rate, it was also very good, so the whole team is working far more effectively. The real disappointments were Ferrari and McLaren. Far from getting better, Ferrari seems to be going backwards and the politics off-track remind me of the days 25 years ago when the team boss seemed to change every five minutes. It seems that, while Mercedes produced a new engine from scratch for the new regulations, Ferrari just started with a six-cylinder version of the old V8 then added the ERS package onto it. A big step is needed next year. As for McLaren, it had the Mercedes engine but didn't make the most of it. We saw at the end of the season the new front wing trialled that was produced by Peter Prodromou, recruited from Red Bull, and that philosophy of reducing peak downforce in favour of consistency points to one of the problems with McLaren's previous approach. My old team, Force India, did a good job at the start of the year and came close to beating McLaren. It needs to have a stronger in-season development rate if it is to keep up the momentum that it showed early in the season. Force India proved that you don't necessarily need the big budgets to get good results.
There was a lot of talk this year about the sound of the engines and the quality of the racing. Actually, there has been some very good racing this year even if it was a shame to have one team so dominant. The noise is something that should have been addressed when the rules were being written, so it's a bit late to do anything about that. But overall the cars had good power, less rear grip and you could see the drivers working harder on the track. What was bad this year was everything happening off-track. The politics of F1 have always frustrated me, but this year those involved took things to a new level. Problems, such as the financial troubles of some teams, were recognised and talked about endlessly. But what was done? Nothing. I have suggested ways that costs, and the money needed to compete, could be cut - measures that could be introduced easily, but everybody is too busy arguing to take any action. You would have thought that Marussia and Caterham dropping off the grid would have been a wake-up call, but as long as I have been involved in F1, the teams have struggled to agree anything. And when changes are agreed, such as the rules governing this year's noses, they just create other problems. Next year, unless Mercedes screws up badly, I can't see anyone else winning the championship. But there is the chance for the rest to close up. With Honda returning we have a fourth engine manufacturer - will it find the magic button (no pun intended) and challenge Mercedes? Things are looking up but I wouldn't mind seeing a few more cars on the grid. 18 is a bit spartan. The question is whether F1 can do the right thing off-track to make the best of some decent racing on Sunday afternoons.
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| Gary Anderson reviews F1 2014
AUTOSPORT's technical consultant looks back over the Formula 1 season, and explains why Mercedes' early dominance wasn't what really impressed him about the team
Everybody talks about how impressive it was that Mercedes was so far ahead at the start of the 2014 season. But I don't agree with that. At the start of the season Mercedes benefited because most other teams screwed up. What really impressed me was that by the end of the season Mercedes was still comfortably ahead and, by some measures, actually pulling away from the pack. In Australia, the best non-Mercedes qualifier was Daniel Ricciardo's Red Bull, 0.3 per cent behind. In Abu Dhabi at the end of the year, the Williams of Valtteri Bottas that qualified third was almost 0.4 per cent behind. We keep hearing rumours about the big step the Mercedes engine package will take next year. That, and the fact that Mercedes was able to make significant aerodynamic gains during the 2014 season, would really worry me if I was running Red Bull or Ferrari.
It is too easy to overlook just how good a job Mercedes did during 2014. The foundations that led to its dominance this year were laid a long time ago by Ross Brawn. When he was recruiting well-respected senior technical personnel like Bob Bell, Aldo Costa and Geoff Willis, people asked whether it was a question of too many cooks. But the structure was right and, with the focus on getting the team into a championship-winning position for the new regulations introduced this year, huge effort went into the 2014 car. Remember, Mercedes is a team that was underachieving only a few years ago. While there has been big investment, money does not automatically guarantee success. Mercedes deserves credit for the job it has done. After all, there was nothing stopping Ferrari or Red Bull-Renault doing the same. In the three races Mercedes didn't win, the defeats were only because something went wrong for it rather than the silver cars being outpaced. Every time, Daniel Ricciardo was the beneficiary. In Canada, it was because of ERS failures on both Mercedes; in Hungary, it was down to a combination of safety car timing and Lewis Hamilton's engine failure in qualifying; in Belgium it was the collision between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. But you only need two cars to make a race, and Hamilton and Rosberg kept us entertained all year. It was right that Hamilton won because, particularly in the closing stages of the year, he was the quicker driver in race conditions. But Rosberg did well to take it down to the wire. It always seemed that Hamilton had things more under control. I regularly watched trackside during the season, and while Rosberg was often having to hustle the car, Hamilton was letting the Mercedes do all the work. It seemed that Hamilton had a real understanding of what the car could do, how much grip it had, whereas Rosberg was feeling his way. Perhaps that was an advantage for Rosberg in qualifying, allowing him to get the tyres up to temperature more quickly, but this was at the heart of Hamilton's advantage in the race. Not only was it quicker over long runs, but also gave him a small advantage in terms of fuel use.
Given the superiority Mercedes had, the rest just needed to make the best of it. Ricciardo was the star driver, not just for his three wins. He outperformed Sebastian Vettel over the season, and had a driving style that worked very well with these cars - able to carry good speed into the corners and not work the tyres too hard. Williams really should have been able to pick up at least one of the lost Mercedes wins, but while it was the best non-Mercedes finisher more often than Red Bull, this didn't happen in the right races. Even so, under Pat Symonds and with Rob Smedley joining the team in April, the turnaround from last year was remarkable. If you look at the Williams development rate, it was also very good, so the whole team is working far more effectively. The real disappointments were Ferrari and McLaren. Far from getting better, Ferrari seems to be going backwards and the politics off-track remind me of the days 25 years ago when the team boss seemed to change every five minutes. It seems that, while Mercedes produced a new engine from scratch for the new regulations, Ferrari just started with a six-cylinder version of the old V8 then added the ERS package onto it. A big step is needed next year. As for McLaren, it had the Mercedes engine but didn't make the most of it. We saw at the end of the season the new front wing trialled that was produced by Peter Prodromou, recruited from Red Bull, and that philosophy of reducing peak downforce in favour of consistency points to one of the problems with McLaren's previous approach. My old team, Force India, did a good job at the start of the year and came close to beating McLaren. It needs to have a stronger in-season development rate if it is to keep up the momentum that it showed early in the season. Force India proved that you don't necessarily need the big budgets to get good results.
There was a lot of talk this year about the sound of the engines and the quality of the racing. Actually, there has been some very good racing this year even if it was a shame to have one team so dominant. The noise is something that should have been addressed when the rules were being written, so it's a bit late to do anything about that. But overall the cars had good power, less rear grip and you could see the drivers working harder on the track. What was bad this year was everything happening off-track. The politics of F1 have always frustrated me, but this year those involved took things to a new level. Problems, such as the financial troubles of some teams, were recognised and talked about endlessly. But what was done? Nothing. I have suggested ways that costs, and the money needed to compete, could be cut - measures that could be introduced easily, but everybody is too busy arguing to take any action. You would have thought that Marussia and Caterham dropping off the grid would have been a wake-up call, but as long as I have been involved in F1, the teams have struggled to agree anything. And when changes are agreed, such as the rules governing this year's noses, they just create other problems. Next year, unless Mercedes screws up badly, I can't see anyone else winning the championship. But there is the chance for the rest to close up. With Honda returning we have a fourth engine manufacturer - will it find the magic button (no pun intended) and challenge Mercedes? Things are looking up but I wouldn't mind seeing a few more cars on the grid. 18 is a bit spartan. The question is whether F1 can do the right thing off-track to make the best of some decent racing on Sunday afternoons.
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