By Ben Anderson | |
Grand Prix Editor |
Everyone who follows Formula 1, except those who work in Brackley, Brixworth or Stuttgart of course, hopes that 2017's major rule changes will shake up the competitive order, perhaps even end the overwhelming dominance displayed by Mercedes since F1's last major rule change in '14. Mercedes has remained cautious about the prospect of maintaining its vice-like grip on the world championship amid changes some say are on a scale F1 hasn't seen in decades. The German manufacturer feels it will be difficult for any team to sustain success through a period of major rules transformation. But Jenson Button reckons it will be a "massive ask" for anyone to overhaul Mercedes this season, principally because its engine advantage will still be vital given the need to power through the extra drag created by the enhanced aerodynamics and wider tyres. Ex-Red Bull driver Mark Webber agrees. F1 tweaks its regulations constantly, but major overhauls of the technical make-up of the cars are actually quite rare - hence the feeling there is more scope for Mercedes to be outwitted by its rivals this year. This logic is understandable when viewed through the prism of recent history. Mercedes hasn't looked back since V6 hybrid turbo engines replaced normally-aspirated V8s in 2014 - when it vaulted to the top of the pile at the expense of Red Bull-Renault. This seismic shift in F1's competitive make-up, ending four unbroken seasons of championship success for Red Bull, can be directly attributed to the changes to the engine formula. Treading this path put F1 into uncharted territory for engine performance. The imposition of fuel mass and flow limitations, in combination with the introduction of new hybrid ERS components, pushed the development of downsized combustion engines to new extremes. Renault admitted to complacency during its championship-winning runs with Red Bull, underestimating the size of this combustive challenge. Ferrari made a similar mistake. All have been paying the price ever since. But who's to say Mercedes' success was only about this? Mercedes was already the coming force in F1 before the 2014 rule changes, emerging as the major threat to Red Bull's hegemony. It had the fifth fastest car in 2012, but by '13 was a close second to Red Bull on pure pace - just 0.105% down on average across the season. Mercedes scored eight pole positions from 19 races that year, but was often let down by poor tyre management in races - something it has worked hard to correct since, with obvious success. It may not have toppled Red Bull so dramatically in 2014 without the engine rule changes to tip the scales, but Mercedes developed impressively enough aerodynamically under the previous regulations to suggest it would have been a serious contender regardless. Maybe not dominant, but certainly right up there. Before hybrid engines arrived, F1 arguably hadn't seen such significant rules upheaval since 2009, when KERS was adopted, slick tyres were reintroduced for the first time since 1997, and the aerodynamic profiling of the cars was drastically altered in a bid to make overtaking easier. Button leapt to the top of the pile with Brawn, while Red Bull (an erstwhile lower points contender and occasional podium finisher) became a bona fide frontrunner and laid the template for its subsequent dominant run. McLaren and Ferrari, championship rivals under the previous rules, were both left floundering. Red Bull did not lead the way in developing the controversial 'double diffuser' that helped propel Brawn to the front (and also gave Toyota and Williams a handy competitive boost), but any team that can call on Adrian Newey to interpret a new set of aerodynamic regulations is bound to fare well. Red Bull subsequently became the team to beat with Newey steering the ship on car design. It will undoubtedly be banking on him working his magic again this time around. He performed a similar trick for McLaren in 1998, when cars were made narrower by 20mm and grooved tyres were brought in after almost three decades of using slick rubber. The MP4-13 returned championship success to McLaren for the first time in seven seasons, while reigning champion Williams slumped to a winless third. But this spectacular reversal was as much about Renault withdrawing its works support from Williams - and Newey jumping ship - as it was about F1's regulatory overhaul. Again this was about the gradual, methodical process of building a team into a force to be reckoned with. McLaren signed a works engine deal with Mercedes in 1995, won races in '97, and the championship double with a Newey-designed car the following season. The rule changes presented an opportunity, perhaps tipped the scales decisively in McLaren's favour, but the building blocks were already firmly in place. Newey knows what it's like to be on the wrong side of major rule change too. In 1994, when F1 banned electronic driver aids such as traction control, ABS, and active suspension, these sweeping rule changes negatively impacted Williams, which had grown dominant during the previous two seasons. Williams got stronger as the season progressed, once aerodynamic and passive suspension problems were overcome, and won the constructors' championship regardless, but of course we'll never know if a driver of Ayrton Senna's calibre would have ultimately defeated the surging force of Michael Schumacher and Benetton, which became a dominant package for two successive seasons off the back of these rule changes. But yet again this rise can trace it roots back to earlier structural changes within the team behind the scenes. Before becoming the technical mastermind behind Ferrari's late-90s resurgence and early-to-mid '00s domination, as well as his own eponymous team's unlikely 2009 success and building the foundations for Mercedes' current supremacy, Ross Brawn can take much of the credit for helping to build Benetton into the brief potent force it became. He became the team's technical director in 1991. Brawn's nous allied to the design genius of Rory Byrne meant that three years later Benetton was celebrating Schumacher's maiden world championship, and a title double the following year after swapping Ford engines for Renault motivation. The triple axis of Schumacher, Brawn and Byrne went on to underpin Ferrari's resurgence in the early 2000s under the leadership of Jean Todt. Until Renault upset the order of things in 2005-06, amid an intense tyre war between Michelin and Bridgestone, every championship-winning F1 car between 1992 and 2004 was influenced by design from either Byrne or Newey. It's tempting to look back and point to particular rule changes as the key drivers in defining a shift in F1's competitive order. Had Bridgestone not dropped the ball when F1 mandated tyres last entire race distances in 2005, perhaps Ferrari would have taken that championship instead of Michelin-shod Renault. The rules can have a say, present new opportunities, but ultimately it comes down to personnel and structure. Ferrari's last properly successful seasons came at the end of the Schumacher/Brawn/Byrne/Todt golden era, with cars designed by Aldo Costa, who incidentally has been one of the main men behind the Mercedes chassis that have dominated the last three world championships. He has worked under a structure built up initially by Brawn, and developed further by Toto Wolff, Paddy Lowe and engine chief Andy Cowell. This season that structure will change, thanks to Lowe's return to Williams, for which he was incidentally a key player in developing the active suspension technology that helped propel the team to a dominant position in 1992 and '93. 2017 marks a distinct break with F1's modern history. Since it began trying to curb ground effect cars ahead of the 1981 season the decision-makers have been obsessed with limiting aerodynamic development in the interests of curbing speeds and improving safety. Now it will actively encourage aerodynamic development in the name of making F1 faster again. But it doesn't necessarily follow that the competitive order will be dramatically overturned simply because the rules have changed, even though that's the impression created by what has unfolded following the most major rules upheavals of recent times. The competitive order between 2013 and '14 was actually quite similar, except for Mercedes jumping Red Bull, Williams making a massive leap thanks to its calculated decision to switch from Renault to Mercedes customer engines, and Lotus dropping way back on account of sticking with Renault power for the first year of V6 hybrid turbos. Average pace ranking: 2013 vs 2014How the teams stacked up before and after the new rulesThe shake-up was much more pronounced from 2008 to '09, but that picture is skewed by multiple manufacturer withdrawals following the global financial crisis, and the fact Ferrari and McLaren were engaged in a close title fight through 2008 that ate up valuable and finite development resources - notwithstanding the controversy over double diffusers. Average pace ranking: 2008 vs 2009How major changes for 2009 shuffled the orderBeyond Williams and McLaren switching places, the competitive order for 1998 was fairly similar to that which emerged through the course of the previous year, despite major rule changes. Average pace ranking: 1997 vs 1998The effects of grooved tyres and narrower cars for '98Predicting the effect of rule changes is fraught with peril, despite the general impression of upheaval they create. In 1998 and 2014 the gaps between teams were greatly increased compared to the prior seasons, even though the competitive order remained broadly similar, while between 2008 and '09 there was both a change in the order and a closing up of the field, which flies in the face of the received wisdom that states stable regulations inevitably create conditions for closer competition. Perhaps the revised aerodynamic regulations will open up the possibility for Mercedes' rivals to find a similar loophole to that exploited by Brawn, Toyota and Williams in 2009? This seems unlikely to me, simply because the aerodynamics on the 2017 cars are meant to be enhanced versions of what we have already seen under the previous regulations, rather than a root and branch reform of the type seen in '09. Mercedes has remained one of the leading teams aerodynamically during its dominant run, it has consistently produced the best engine under the V6 hybrid regulations - which remain in force - and there is no obvious reason to expect it won't retain that advantage. Understanding Pirelli's substantially revised tyres is likely to be the biggest factor in defining the competitive order of 2017. They will be much bigger and the compounds are expected to behave very differently. But mandatory limits to camber and tyre pressure settings will remain - reducing the chances for teams find clever set-ups to better exploit the rubber, and in any case Mercedes is more advanced in its understanding of tyre science than most of its rivals. It's also unlikely to have fallen into the 2008 trap that caught out McLaren and Ferrari - spending too long developing last year's car at the expense of this year's, given it was not put under any sustained pressure in 2016 so could afford head space to work on '17 without undue worry. Perhaps Lowe's departure from the technical helm has the greatest potential to upset the Mercedes applecart, robbing the outfit of important leadership at a crucial time. But given the way Mercedes structured itself in order to become F1's dominant force in the first place, even this seems unlikely - notwithstanding expectations that the highly-rated James Allison will fill Lowe's void in the very near future. Autosport spoke to engine chief Andy Cowell about this structure at the back end of last season. He explained how Mercedes operates in a way that can deal effectively with simultaneous regulatory challenges, while also not becoming over-reliant on particular individuals. "We tried to make sure people were just focused on the current or the future regulations, not straddling both," he said of the way Mercedes approached the 2014 rule changes, which included substantial aerodynamic re-profiling at the front of the cars as well as new engines. "So we had a dedicated team looking after the V8 and the KERS system in 2012/13 with its own chief engineer that was looking after just that. Then we had a dedicated team on the future, and that team grew as the work on the V8 and KERS dropped. "It's not efficient to be straddling in terms of how your head thinks. If you've got any responsibility for the current car, that draws the majority of your brain. If you start doing bits for the future, your head is tired. "You really want the factory open 24/7, seven days a week - you want the innovation, but not everyone is needed all that time. The hardware doesn't need to sleep, but we do or we underperform. "So how do you come up with an organisation, that is effectively running a relay race? Ola Kallenius [Cowell's predecessor] would refer to it as 'always be ready for the baton'. "And we bought some batons - International Athletics Association red batons. We put white labels on them and in our morning meetings it really was a case of 'right today you've got the baton'. The person goes away knowing they've got the baton, knowing the company is relying on them to make progress. "It's that mindset of we all need to run the 100 metres in a relay race in less than 10 seconds." Mercedes hasn't become F1's dominant team by accident, and there's no reason to expect that situation to change suddenly just because the rules have. It may do. History shows it often has done in the right circumstances. But those circumstances are usually created by a pattern of emerging power within a team already present before the rule changes - Mercedes in 2013, McLaren in 1997, Benetton in 1993. And/or serious mistakes or weaknesses emerging suddenly in erstwhile dominant operations: Renault in 2014, McLaren and Ferrari in 2009, Williams in 1998 and '94. Red Bull is arguably F1's coming force this time around. It got itself firmly back into shape last season, after a troubled 2015 campaign. But this improvement came amid a serious Ferrari slump, and that close fight for second in the constructors' championship may have distracted it slightly from the bigger picture of 2017. The overall deficit to Mercedes was still large (0.842% on average across the season), and F1's dominant team hasn't really looked ill equipped for a development war, which is surely what Red Bull will be banking on in its mission to turn the tables. Mercedes' progress has continued unabated, and hasn't yet shown any obvious signs of slowing. Much hinges on whether something untoward in the new regulations catches Mercedes unaware, which is then exploited fully by its nearest rivals. But Mercedes has been slowly and methodically built to win - in every department. And although its reigning world champion driver has newly retired, and its technical director has recently departed, these changes shouldn't represent massive weaknesses for the opposition to immediately exploit given the way Mercedes operates. There are few reasons to expect Mercedes to become suddenly vulnerable in 2017, whatever F1 may hope to the contrary. |
By Ben Anderson | |
Grand Prix Editor |
Everyone who follows Formula 1, except those who work in Brackley, Brixworth or Stuttgart of course, hopes that 2017's major rule changes will shake up the competitive order, perhaps even end the overwhelming dominance displayed by Mercedes since F1's last major rule change in '14. Mercedes has remained cautious about the prospect of maintaining its vice-like grip on the world championship amid changes some say are on a scale F1 hasn't seen in decades. The German manufacturer feels it will be difficult for any team to sustain success through a period of major rules transformation. But Jenson Button reckons it will be a "massive ask" for anyone to overhaul Mercedes this season, principally because its engine advantage will still be vital given the need to power through the extra drag created by the enhanced aerodynamics and wider tyres. Ex-Red Bull driver Mark Webber agrees. F1 tweaks its regulations constantly, but major overhauls of the technical make-up of the cars are actually quite rare - hence the feeling there is more scope for Mercedes to be outwitted by its rivals this year. This logic is understandable when viewed through the prism of recent history. Mercedes hasn't looked back since V6 hybrid turbo engines replaced normally-aspirated V8s in 2014 - when it vaulted to the top of the pile at the expense of Red Bull-Renault. This seismic shift in F1's competitive make-up, ending four unbroken seasons of championship success for Red Bull, can be directly attributed to the changes to the engine formula. Treading this path put F1 into uncharted territory for engine performance. The imposition of fuel mass and flow limitations, in combination with the introduction of new hybrid ERS components, pushed the development of downsized combustion engines to new extremes. Renault admitted to complacency during its championship-winning runs with Red Bull, underestimating the size of this combustive challenge. Ferrari made a similar mistake. All have been paying the price ever since. But who's to say Mercedes' success was only about this? Mercedes was already the coming force in F1 before the 2014 rule changes, emerging as the major threat to Red Bull's hegemony. It had the fifth fastest car in 2012, but by '13 was a close second to Red Bull on pure pace - just 0.105% down on average across the season. Mercedes scored eight pole positions from 19 races that year, but was often let down by poor tyre management in races - something it has worked hard to correct since, with obvious success. It may not have toppled Red Bull so dramatically in 2014 without the engine rule changes to tip the scales, but Mercedes developed impressively enough aerodynamically under the previous regulations to suggest it would have been a serious contender regardless. Maybe not dominant, but certainly right up there. Before hybrid engines arrived, F1 arguably hadn't seen such significant rules upheaval since 2009, when KERS was adopted, slick tyres were reintroduced for the first time since 1997, and the aerodynamic profiling of the cars was drastically altered in a bid to make overtaking easier. Button leapt to the top of the pile with Brawn, while Red Bull (an erstwhile lower points contender and occasional podium finisher) became a bona fide frontrunner and laid the template for its subsequent dominant run. McLaren and Ferrari, championship rivals under the previous rules, were both left floundering. Red Bull did not lead the way in developing the controversial 'double diffuser' that helped propel Brawn to the front (and also gave Toyota and Williams a handy competitive boost), but any team that can call on Adrian Newey to interpret a new set of aerodynamic regulations is bound to fare well. Red Bull subsequently became the team to beat with Newey steering the ship on car design. It will undoubtedly be banking on him working his magic again this time around. He performed a similar trick for McLaren in 1998, when cars were made narrower by 20mm and grooved tyres were brought in after almost three decades of using slick rubber. The MP4-13 returned championship success to McLaren for the first time in seven seasons, while reigning champion Williams slumped to a winless third. But this spectacular reversal was as much about Renault withdrawing its works support from Williams - and Newey jumping ship - as it was about F1's regulatory overhaul. Again this was about the gradual, methodical process of building a team into a force to be reckoned with. McLaren signed a works engine deal with Mercedes in 1995, won races in '97, and the championship double with a Newey-designed car the following season. The rule changes presented an opportunity, perhaps tipped the scales decisively in McLaren's favour, but the building blocks were already firmly in place. Newey knows what it's like to be on the wrong side of major rule change too. In 1994, when F1 banned electronic driver aids such as traction control, ABS, and active suspension, these sweeping rule changes negatively impacted Williams, which had grown dominant during the previous two seasons. Williams got stronger as the season progressed, once aerodynamic and passive suspension problems were overcome, and won the constructors' championship regardless, but of course we'll never know if a driver of Ayrton Senna's calibre would have ultimately defeated the surging force of Michael Schumacher and Benetton, which became a dominant package for two successive seasons off the back of these rule changes. But yet again this rise can trace it roots back to earlier structural changes within the team behind the scenes. Before becoming the technical mastermind behind Ferrari's late-90s resurgence and early-to-mid '00s domination, as well as his own eponymous team's unlikely 2009 success and building the foundations for Mercedes' current supremacy, Ross Brawn can take much of the credit for helping to build Benetton into the brief potent force it became. He became the team's technical director in 1991. Brawn's nous allied to the design genius of Rory Byrne meant that three years later Benetton was celebrating Schumacher's maiden world championship, and a title double the following year after swapping Ford engines for Renault motivation. The triple axis of Schumacher, Brawn and Byrne went on to underpin Ferrari's resurgence in the early 2000s under the leadership of Jean Todt. Until Renault upset the order of things in 2005-06, amid an intense tyre war between Michelin and Bridgestone, every championship-winning F1 car between 1992 and 2004 was influenced by design from either Byrne or Newey. It's tempting to look back and point to particular rule changes as the key drivers in defining a shift in F1's competitive order. Had Bridgestone not dropped the ball when F1 mandated tyres last entire race distances in 2005, perhaps Ferrari would have taken that championship instead of Michelin-shod Renault. The rules can have a say, present new opportunities, but ultimately it comes down to personnel and structure. Ferrari's last properly successful seasons came at the end of the Schumacher/Brawn/Byrne/Todt golden era, with cars designed by Aldo Costa, who incidentally has been one of the main men behind the Mercedes chassis that have dominated the last three world championships. He has worked under a structure built up initially by Brawn, and developed further by Toto Wolff, Paddy Lowe and engine chief Andy Cowell. This season that structure will change, thanks to Lowe's return to Williams, for which he was incidentally a key player in developing the active suspension technology that helped propel the team to a dominant position in 1992 and '93. 2017 marks a distinct break with F1's modern history. Since it began trying to curb ground effect cars ahead of the 1981 season the decision-makers have been obsessed with limiting aerodynamic development in the interests of curbing speeds and improving safety. Now it will actively encourage aerodynamic development in the name of making F1 faster again. But it doesn't necessarily follow that the competitive order will be dramatically overturned simply because the rules have changed, even though that's the impression created by what has unfolded following the most major rules upheavals of recent times. The competitive order between 2013 and '14 was actually quite similar, except for Mercedes jumping Red Bull, Williams making a massive leap thanks to its calculated decision to switch from Renault to Mercedes customer engines, and Lotus dropping way back on account of sticking with Renault power for the first year of V6 hybrid turbos. Average pace ranking: 2013 vs 2014How the teams stacked up before and after the new rulesThe shake-up was much more pronounced from 2008 to '09, but that picture is skewed by multiple manufacturer withdrawals following the global financial crisis, and the fact Ferrari and McLaren were engaged in a close title fight through 2008 that ate up valuable and finite development resources - notwithstanding the controversy over double diffusers. Average pace ranking: 2008 vs 2009How major changes for 2009 shuffled the orderBeyond Williams and McLaren switching places, the competitive order for 1998 was fairly similar to that which emerged through the course of the previous year, despite major rule changes. Average pace ranking: 1997 vs 1998The effects of grooved tyres and narrower cars for '98Predicting the effect of rule changes is fraught with peril, despite the general impression of upheaval they create. In 1998 and 2014 the gaps between teams were greatly increased compared to the prior seasons, even though the competitive order remained broadly similar, while between 2008 and '09 there was both a change in the order and a closing up of the field, which flies in the face of the received wisdom that states stable regulations inevitably create conditions for closer competition. Perhaps the revised aerodynamic regulations will open up the possibility for Mercedes' rivals to find a similar loophole to that exploited by Brawn, Toyota and Williams in 2009? This seems unlikely to me, simply because the aerodynamics on the 2017 cars are meant to be enhanced versions of what we have already seen under the previous regulations, rather than a root and branch reform of the type seen in '09. Mercedes has remained one of the leading teams aerodynamically during its dominant run, it has consistently produced the best engine under the V6 hybrid regulations - which remain in force - and there is no obvious reason to expect it won't retain that advantage. Understanding Pirelli's substantially revised tyres is likely to be the biggest factor in defining the competitive order of 2017. They will be much bigger and the compounds are expected to behave very differently. But mandatory limits to camber and tyre pressure settings will remain - reducing the chances for teams find clever set-ups to better exploit the rubber, and in any case Mercedes is more advanced in its understanding of tyre science than most of its rivals. It's also unlikely to have fallen into the 2008 trap that caught out McLaren and Ferrari - spending too long developing last year's car at the expense of this year's, given it was not put under any sustained pressure in 2016 so could afford head space to work on '17 without undue worry. Perhaps Lowe's departure from the technical helm has the greatest potential to upset the Mercedes applecart, robbing the outfit of important leadership at a crucial time. But given the way Mercedes structured itself in order to become F1's dominant force in the first place, even this seems unlikely - notwithstanding expectations that the highly-rated James Allison will fill Lowe's void in the very near future. Autosport spoke to engine chief Andy Cowell about this structure at the back end of last season. He explained how Mercedes operates in a way that can deal effectively with simultaneous regulatory challenges, while also not becoming over-reliant on particular individuals. "We tried to make sure people were just focused on the current or the future regulations, not straddling both," he said of the way Mercedes approached the 2014 rule changes, which included substantial aerodynamic re-profiling at the front of the cars as well as new engines. "So we had a dedicated team looking after the V8 and the KERS system in 2012/13 with its own chief engineer that was looking after just that. Then we had a dedicated team on the future, and that team grew as the work on the V8 and KERS dropped. "It's not efficient to be straddling in terms of how your head thinks. If you've got any responsibility for the current car, that draws the majority of your brain. If you start doing bits for the future, your head is tired. "You really want the factory open 24/7, seven days a week - you want the innovation, but not everyone is needed all that time. The hardware doesn't need to sleep, but we do or we underperform. "So how do you come up with an organisation, that is effectively running a relay race? Ola Kallenius [Cowell's predecessor] would refer to it as 'always be ready for the baton'. "And we bought some batons - International Athletics Association red batons. We put white labels on them and in our morning meetings it really was a case of 'right today you've got the baton'. The person goes away knowing they've got the baton, knowing the company is relying on them to make progress. "It's that mindset of we all need to run the 100 metres in a relay race in less than 10 seconds." Mercedes hasn't become F1's dominant team by accident, and there's no reason to expect that situation to change suddenly just because the rules have. It may do. History shows it often has done in the right circumstances. But those circumstances are usually created by a pattern of emerging power within a team already present before the rule changes - Mercedes in 2013, McLaren in 1997, Benetton in 1993. And/or serious mistakes or weaknesses emerging suddenly in erstwhile dominant operations: Renault in 2014, McLaren and Ferrari in 2009, Williams in 1998 and '94. Red Bull is arguably F1's coming force this time around. It got itself firmly back into shape last season, after a troubled 2015 campaign. But this improvement came amid a serious Ferrari slump, and that close fight for second in the constructors' championship may have distracted it slightly from the bigger picture of 2017. The overall deficit to Mercedes was still large (0.842% on average across the season), and F1's dominant team hasn't really looked ill equipped for a development war, which is surely what Red Bull will be banking on in its mission to turn the tables. Mercedes' progress has continued unabated, and hasn't yet shown any obvious signs of slowing. Much hinges on whether something untoward in the new regulations catches Mercedes unaware, which is then exploited fully by its nearest rivals. But Mercedes has been slowly and methodically built to win - in every department. And although its reigning world champion driver has newly retired, and its technical director has recently departed, these changes shouldn't represent massive weaknesses for the opposition to immediately exploit given the way Mercedes operates. There are few reasons to expect Mercedes to become suddenly vulnerable in 2017, whatever F1 may hope to the contrary. |