The Battle For Power

FRENCH, AUSTRIAN & BRITISH GRANDS PRIX

Mercedes and Ferrari have introduced mid-season engine and aero upgrades, but that hasn’t made the competitive hierachy any clearer

As the F1 circus arrived at Paul Ricard for the first time in 28 years, and at the first French Grand Prix in a decade, Mercedes was nervous but excited. There was still a question over the new engine spec that had been due to go into the cars at Montréal, but which was withdrawn at the 11th hour after a tolerance issue was discovered on the dyno at Brixworth. It wasn’t something likely to have stopped the cars in Canada, but it potentially made it unlikely that the engines would have been able to complete their allocated seven-race stint in this era of three engines per season. So the original high-mileage Phase 1 engines had remained in the cars in Canada, where Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton finished second and fifth respectively, well behind Sebastian Vettel’s flying Ferrari, newly fitted with a Phase 2 engine of its own.

For the Friday practice sessions in France, Mercedes would run the modified Phase 2 (now labelled 2.1) and make a call immediately afterwards. As a precaution, there were a couple of newly built Phase 1s waiting, but it would be a potentially damaging blow if they had to be fitted, for it would mean they’d be without the Phase 2’s power gains for seven races or thereabouts – possibly crucial in the midst of a close title fight with Ferrari. Those gains were significant, in the region of 20bhp and surely now nudging the motor towards the 1000bhp barrier on full electrical deploy.

The practice sessions went fine, aside from a minor water leak for Bottas – and the decision was confirmed. The more potent Phase 2.1 motors would be in the cars for the next stage of the season. Mercedes duly wrapped up the front row, pole-sitter Hamilton an impressive 0.4sec clear of Vettel’s third-fastest Ferrari. “The new engine isn’t the reason we’re on pole,” he said, boldly. No, but it was at least half the reason. The rest of it was the W09’s aero efficiency – which is particularly valuable down that long Mistral straight. Ferrari feels its slightly shorter car still lags behind the Merc on how much drag it carries for a given amount of downforce and Mercedes feels that the Ferrari might just have a little more total downforce. As for grunt, the various team analyses suggested Mercedes had edged narrowly back in front.

Hamilton won the race unchallenged, his task made far easier by Vettel locking up and hitting Bottas on the first lap – sending Hamilton’s two strongest challengers to the pits on lap one. So far, so good – and Hamilton retook the championship lead.

RED BULL’S HOME WIN

Next in this mid-summer triple-header sequence was Austria, one of the calendar’s most power-sensitive tracks. Two very significant developments, one each from the title-contending teams, played out here – and that of Mercedes was highly visible. The top corners of its sidepods had been pared right back, even exposing part of the upper side impact structure. This stopped short of separating the pods entirely from the structure – the 2017 Ferrari innovation that had proved so influential on this year’s crop of cars, but not the Mercedes – as that would have required a new monocoque shape. But it was definitely a move towards the Ferrari philosophy. And it delivered a significant aero boost. Impressively, it was super-fast as soon as it hit the track and Bottas for one was raving about the increased rear stability. In fact, it was working a little too well initially as both he and Hamilton were tuning out understeer during practice. With the old car, it had usually been oversteer.

This has never been a great track for Hamilton and he was edged out of pole by Bottas. But around a very short circuit, they were 0.3sec clear of Vettel’s Ferrari. Ah yes, but…. Mercedes wasn’t initially taking too much notice of Vettel’s claim that he lost a couple of tenths on his lap by being over-aggressive in trying to match the Mercs. The real difference, he reckoned, was only a tenth. Merc began to take that claim a little more seriously when it analysed the GPS data and speed trap readings from Q3. Not just of Vettel’s car – but all of the Ferrari-engined machines. The Haas of Romain Grosjean had split the Red Bulls to qualify sixth! That was the other development; Ferrari was running its Phase 2 engine much more aggressively than hitherto, now that certain reliability parameters had been established. It was in Austria that Mercedes realised its new Phase 2.1 was not, after all, going to return its power advantage over Ferrari, as had looked to be the case in France when the Scuderia was still running its unit conservatively. Neither of them won the race. That was the destiny of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull after Mercedes went out with its first double mechanical retirements of the hybrid era. Bottas stopped when running second with a hydraulic leak from the power steering, Hamilton pulled off from the lead with no fuel pressure after a spring broke in the pump. Vettel had been dropped three grid places for impeding and was restricted to third at the end, behind team-mate Kimi Räikkönen.

AGAINST THE ODDS

The ramifications of Austria seemed set to make Silverstone delicately poised – but surely Mercedes was favourite given the high-speed nature of the track, where aero efficiency comes into its own? That and Hamilton’s virtuosity through Maggotts/Becketts. The latter was very much on display as Hamilton squeezed out one of the all-time great pole laps. The in-car footage of that lap had hard-bitten former F1 drivers open-jawed in admiration. Yet it secured him his 76th pole only by the margin of four-hundredths of a second from Vettel’s Ferrari, which in general running looked the faster car. The pole lap was Hamilton more than Mercedes. Ferrari had brought a potent aero update, with elongated slots on the outer edges of the floor to increase the power of the vortices that seal the underfloor, doing the job that nylon skirts used to do in the olden days. There was an accompanying change to the diffuser better to exploit the more powerful flow. Furthermore, a frame-by-frame comparison of the laps of Hamilton and Vettel showed that the Ferrari was making time up down the straights. It had more power.

Now that Abbey, Copse and Maggotts are flat-in-top for everyone, that power has come to be even more meaningful in that it can better overcome the speed-sapping tyre scrub that is revealed by the slight deepening of the engine tone as the driver remains flat on the gas. This was the reason the Red Bulls were nowhere. So, on a Mercedes track Ferrari was Mercedes-quick. That was a worrying development for Mercedes. Even more so after Vettel stormed into the lead at the start and kept it until the end. Hamilton was nudged into a spin by Räikkönen on the first lap but recovered to second, helped by having 22sec of deficit wiped away by a safety car. Bottas had taken up the initial chase of Vettel, but the Ferrari comfortably had the legs of the silver car. For the first time in the hybrid era, was Mercedes now the underdog? That was the somewhat startling question arising out of a three-weekend sequence of tracks the team had been expected to dominate.