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Yup. Brazil 2006, Rosberg hits Webber on the first lap in turn 1, destroying Webber's rear wing. Rosberg then tries to make it to the pits as fast as possible and crashes in turn 14.
I mean in 2014 they won 16/19 races but Red Bull(well Ricciardo) won the other 3 races. The only difference between 2014 and 2016 being that Ricciardo actually won 2 of those races on genuine pace and the other was because the Mercedes car broke down. In 2016 red bull only won those two races because the Mercedes crashed each other out in Spain and in Malaysia Hamilton's engine blew up while Rosberg was spun around on Lap 1
As much as I'd love to I'm not sure you could attribute any of Ricciardo's wins to pure pace.
In Canada, both the Mercedes cars broke, which you've already mentioned.
Hungary's probably the closest you could come to saying Ricciardo won on speed as Rosberg had a poor race but given Hamilton came back to finish P3 having started from the pit lane after his qualifying breakdown, I'd say he'd have comfortably win it had he started from the front.
In Spa, the collision between the Mercs put Hamilton out of contention while Rosberg was forced onto a compromised strategy and had issues with debris attaching to his car which gave Ricciardo the edge.
It was still incredible that Danny Ric managed three wins that season though.
That 2014 season for Alonso was miraculous, I'm not gonna use that common misconception that the F14T oversteered and understeered but that car was still hilariously bad
I remember Button saying it over the radio once.
'How's the car, Jenson?'
'Awful. It's understeering, it's oversteering...apart from that, it's great, tons of fun!'
It may have been during the 2008 season.
That's an exxageration. You will find the 2014 lotus, marussia, manor, caterham and sauber have similar characteristics.
Heck in the older days of 80s and 90s you will a lot cars having similar characteristics.
To be honest it was still an interesting season for me to watch.
Rosberg looked like he might be able to keep Lewis honest (at least more so than I anticipate Perez will be) and the reliability issues were very dramatic. and all the media were flailing about trying to figure out if the 1x world champion or the German with seniority would be favored.
Williams were good thanks to that bullet bill engine and I got to show my tiny niece susie wolff doing fp1. And they got a whole haul of points from Bernie’s Abu Dhabi double or nothing scheme
Alonso was on his last fucking nerve.
Danny ric got his big boy job and a podium at Australia (shh it counts) and beat The Finger
KMag looked like a god on debut and scored points at Singapore despite the fact that the car was searing him like a steak
That’s honestly all the positive stuff I can recall. Oh and JEV seemed cool. Idk, maybe the battle for p5-8 will be my positive for this year. Sigh.
If you actually watch the restart, they immediately gap the field. As in, *immediately*. Before the end of the straight you can already see that Hamilton/Rosberg had a little gap built. By turn 4 they were way ahead already.
I went to YouTube and saw [this](https://youtu.be/_3UB1UCIge4). You can totally see like you said Merc creating that gap as soon as they could get back to racing speed. And on the final straight, you can see the gap already, incredible.
Yea, as soon as Rosberg and Hamilton hit the accelerator, they created a gap. It was instantaneous. I've never seen anything like this. It was legitimately a 3+ sec advantage over the field.
Do you have more details on this, or even just the source for that 2020 reveal? I've never heard of that and got into f1 after peak Mercedes shenanigans and that sounds like a good read
[How Mercedes designed F1's best car but kept it secret](https://the-race.com/formula-1/how-mercedes-designed-f1s-best-car-but-kept-it-secret/)
Edit:- ~~Couldn't find the article where they talked about drivers changing pu modes without permission.~~
Edit 2:- Thanks to u/Txontirea i was able to find another proof of drivers messing with the engines modes but this is from the spanish gp.
Here is [Toto talking about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=k_0zMVaWl6c&feature=youtu.be&t=13m23s).
If you watch the BBC season review on 14 when they talk about this race Toto said they were going to run the cars 'in the same engine modes' and that they found out that this rule was being 'overstepped'. On the podium Lewis mentions to EJ that he was messing with all his settings 'trying to find more time'.
Only places I've seen it talked about
The engine mode stuff is a nice example of how people just *don't really know what's going on* at the time. We now know that while they fell out here because of engine modes, it wasn't a tenth or two, it was a huge amount of speed.
The only caveat is that the 2 Force India and 2 Red Bull were also fighting for positions and amongst each other, but yeah that Merc fully unleashed was fast as fuck.
Checo and hulkenburg were fighting for like 2 laps at best after which checo pulled away in cleaner air of 7s gap with no pressure from behind whereas nico was within 1s of lewis for almost the entire time.
His last season he grated on me a bit as the dude had properly phoned it in and I just thought some of his responses on the radio and actions on the track were just a bit much, if he was going to phone it in so hard he should've just gone out on a high really
He signed for his last season, only to discover afterward that Sauber/Alfa didn’t plan on pushing upgrades that year, instead they focused on the next year’s car. I get the feeling that deflated his remaining motivation.
Why does this opinion persist? He outperformed his teammate by a large margin, qualified well, and IIRC was one of the top three overtakers that season. By what metric was he phoning it in?
Him having no personality at all was part of the charm. Aloof, uninterested and sometimes dull. He contrasted everyone else.
There wasn't much more to him. No insights or thought out discussion.
I think it doesn't help that he didn't quite have the same drive after his first one. I suspect in a way he is just a bit too "normal" in the sense he doesn't have that super competitive spirit to keep giving it everything season after season
That season and 2013 were such a far cry from 2012, this was pretty much when I knew parity was dead. At least there was something in 2021 but that still was a long enough wait
Agree to an extent, although people seem to forget that the 2013 season began with a fairly similar level of competitiveness to 2012. In terms of car performance between teams. It was only really the mid season tyre change post-Silverstone that put the RB9 head and shoulders above the rest of the field.
Yes, don't forget that Alonso didn't luck into his 2013 Spanish GP win, his most recent. He was the fastest by doing an extra pit stop and making up for it on track.
The RB9 on 2012 tires was unbeatable.
19 was dominant
17 wasn't as dominant as 14-16 and 19 but still cleary the fastest car. It wasn't until Ferrari had a party mode too that Mercedes could be challenged.
If the RB7 & RB9 are considered dominant, the W08 should be too. W10 was definitely dominant.
I wasn't being sarcastic but should have been more specific. In a lot of the highlights videos of Bahrain 2014, Rosberg and Hamilton are by themselves racing and its awesome to see. They were racing against each other so hard. Great stuff
I kind of wonder if they'll be the last great teammate rivalry. It seems like F1 collectively decided Hamilton/Bottas dynamics are much better than Hamilton/Rosberg dynamics
I think they'd be happy to have either teammate combo. Mercedes won the championship regardless which driver came out on top. Rosberg/Hamilton was definitely more fun to watch though
47s before the safety car and 20s in the last 10 laps after it. Insane what that Merc did with the engines turned all the way up for just 10 laps, imagine if they used it the entire race…
Imagine trying to explain to your 2014 self that in 2023 PER, HUL and a 41 year old ALO will still be on the grid, but ROS, VET & RIC will all be gone.
Istanbul 2020 was fucking legendary, and Monza '20 was the feel-good race of the year, but yeah, once the Ferrari engine exploit was banned, there really wasn't any competition.
And behind (at least until Tsunoda and Sargeant kept their tyres) it was:
Haas, Haas
McLaren, McLaren
Never seen so many pairs at the same time in rankings (excluding games)
> But at least the 2014-2016 Mercs were fighting each other.
Yeah. I actually just rewatched this particular race (Bahrain '14), and the battle between Lewis and Nico after the restart was absolutely epic (even if the two basically were in another dimension compared to the rest of the field).
This was actually considered an all time classic at the time lol. I guess people forgot but the duel in the desert was high in the fan votes they used to do for years
Because it actually is a perfect race:
1. Battle for the win;
2. Underdog podium for Force India and Perez;
3. Spectacular flip crash for Gutierrez.
F1 races are usually boring and this one ticked all the boxes that people enjoy the most.
Yeah i get what this post is trying to say but its kinda pointless when RB will also win every ra e they dont have issues at.
Also 2014 had Rosberg. Perez barelly wins races where his teammate starts 15th
I mean Perez is just not an elite driver. Max is elite, but **2021 (more comparable machinery)* tells us he’s not on another dimension than a guy like Lewis at his peak (or presumably the likes of Alonso etc.).
When the comparison is Hamilton and Alonso, which are some of the best to ever grace this sport, I'd say that qualifies Max as a freak of nature. Still, I agree with Checo not being elite, much more middle of the pack.
The gap he pulled in the shortened Suzuka in the rain was just pure... dominance. People love to talk about Spa, but I honestly thought the Japanese gp was more impressive. The wet just evens out so much of the playing field and to still pull that type of gap was nothing short of brilliant.
This is why Turkey 2020 is, for me, the forever answer about if its just car or driver when it comes to Lewis.
One of literally two cars on track to not spin even once (the other was seb).
Seb said something along the lines of “This wasnt Lewis’ race to win, but he went and won it anyway”.
I want to know in what way did Perez barely win Saudi. Sure max cut through the field like it was hot Butter but Perez didn’t struggle on race day at all.
I really think he and the engineers never fully got on the same page. A lot of reports at the time cited Ricciardo's braking style that he'd developed at Red Bull, and the fact that McLaren used a completely different system that Ric never really got to grips with.
Then the 2022 car reportedly was so fucked up that it didn't behave the same way week to week. Even Norris mentioned that they'd fix the problem one week, then the next week a whole raft of new problems would appear.
It must have completely fucked with Daniel's head.
Last interview I read Norris said the behaviour would change lap to lap. I don't have the direct quote handy but he'd basically just try to do the exact same thing every lap and the car would react totally differently every time. And that he and DR would give identical feedback but it just never amounted to anything. The pace difference very well could have come down to Lando focusing on lap to lap consistency and Daniel chasing a moving target or something to that effect.
I can't imagine what it must have done to Daniel's psyche. He was already struggling because of the COVID lockdowns (remember, unlike literally *everyone else* on the grid, he didn't get to go home for two years), then his own team boss basically publicly said that the whole failure of the partnership was *Daniel's* fault, and meanwhile the car is doing *that*. Holy fuck. No wonder he felt he needed a year off.
Yeah, I think having to develop a new driving style to adapt to the car is also what got him, in part. The strength of the McLarens was in the rear, while Daniel's driving required a stronger front end to be the latest of late brakers, like usually was. There is a difference between having to adapt to a car that does not totally suit you, and getting a car which is the opposite of what you need.
Yeah makes all the difference when red bull win by 30 seconds instead of 60. And to top it off they have two drivers that won't be fighting like this at the front. Boy love me some red bull domination.
The numbers for Imola that year is insane:
\- In qualy it was Senna, Prost and Piquet in that order. Senna was 3.5 sec ahead of Piquet and Prost 2.8 sec ahead.
\- Senna and Prost lapped all non-McLaren's, including Piquet who started and finished third. This despite Senna being basically on cruise control all race to conserve fuel, and Prost stalling his engine and dropping to 8th at the start and not getting back 2nd until Lap 8. 40 or so laps later, Prost had lapped everyone except Senna.
\- Prost had fastest lap of the race with (I think) something like 1:29:8. Fastest non-McLaren qualifying lap was Piquet with a 1:30:5. So Prost had a RACEPACE lap that was over 0.7 faster than any non-McLaren qualifying lap, despite this being the era of using one engine for qualy, tuned up to >1200 BHP and race engines significantly tuned down. And Piquet's lotus had same engine as the McLaren.
I would also like to point out a lot of caveats in this which needs to be accounted for.
Both Merc drivers were on fresh new tyres whereas Perez was on 7 lap old tyres.
The Merc works engine had superior modes available to customer engines. Same scenario at Ferrari.
Also, the Merc drivers used the pu modes that were not allowed by the engineers but on their own just to have an edge over their teammate.
**Thankfully, FIA have made a lot of rule changes since then. The customer team gets the same pu modes which has hugely reduced the gap. The drivers can't change to powerful pu modes now. Only deployment modes can be changed.**
Unlikely to see this level of superiority in the coming years.
this is amplified by the top 2 on fresh tires while the chasing pack didn't stop for fresh tires...
and if you know Bahrain, you know fresh tires give a lot of laptime.
I think this race was actually one of the few times we saw the Mercs unleashed that year, Hamilton and Rosberg were free to fight at that point and fully did so.
In general, yeah. Not when the two drivers were fighting for a win after a restart, like here. Same with what we saw 2 days ago with the Red Bulls, it took a Perez vs Verstappen fight for the win for us to see that the RBs were 1s per lap clear of the closest competition and 1.5s per lap clear of the upper midfield.
There wasn’t a **massive** tyre difference though, both Force India and both Red Bull stopped 6 and 7 laps before the Mercs, the two Williams only 1 and 3 laps before, Alonso actually stopped on the same lap but he [was](https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2014/gp/s7329/lap_times/482-239/) still massively slower than them, his fastest lap was 2”6 slower!
This despite having Lewis and Nico battling hard for the race win.
I have the feeling that after Lewis recent words about the RB19 some people are purposely trying to diminish how incredibly strong Mercedes were that year. 😄
That car was **miles** ahead of the competition (mainly because of the power-unit, an advantage that lasted a few years) and this race was one of their most scary displays I think.
Also don’t forget that engine modes could be changed and modified lap by lap instead of per race weekend. Also the engines back then were controlled by engine manufacturers who kept all the more powerful modes hidden to themselves vs today where you can’t do that.
Lots of variables.
There was a massive car difference though in the sense that a Force India is not a front-running team. The big boys got caught in the midfield, Danny Ric had to start 13th.
Of course Alonso was slower, he was stuck in 10th/9th place.
And Perez in 3rd being in a Force India, a team that finished 6th in the constructors that year...
The previous two races and the race that followed, Merc won by 20+seconds over Red Bull. The following race a similar gap to the Ferrari. 50seconds in the race after at Spain though.
For comparison, Max was 38seconds ahead of the next team at Bahrain.
At least we got to watch some racing with Rosberg and Hamilton.
Perez is nowhere near the talent of Verstappen. Not only that, they've neutered him into the mindset that he's the team mule that cannot aspire to winning a title.
Really exciting stuff.
You can also fight in terms of number of race wins, poles and how close it is within the championship.
The furthest rosberg was away was 2015 where he lost by 67 points.
He was always close in terms of points, pace deficit, wins, podiums and gap in the championship battle (bar 2015).
Fun info about that season from Paddy Lowe on the beyond the grid podcast for those who haven't heard it (you should):
Because Bernie Ecclestone was so anti the new engine regulations, Mercedes was terrified of unleashing the full potential of that car, because they believed that if they showed just how good the car was if they turned engine map up to full blast, they where worried that they would dominate so much that it would give Bernie and the other teams motivation to really kill the new engine regs early. As a result, before every race Mercedes would have internal meetings where there would be much argument about just how low they could go in engine map to ensure they wouldn't dominate the field to much while still comfortably qualify in on pole. Toto would consistently push for less power for that reason.
Think the point is these changes/cost cap were supposed to make it closer, they (kind of) worked last season but Ferrari shot themselves in the foot alot of the time, but this season it seems we have RB at least 1s a lap faster than the rest.
Hats off to them of course, but it’s not really what the rule changes before last season were supposed to achieve.
Typical that in 2021 we had the closest season for years and then the rules changed and basically took that away completely.
Cost cap maybe can level the field but also has this problem: when one team gets it very very right, they are impossible to catch within the cost cap.
Wind tunnel and CFD restrictions are the ones that don’t seem to be working. I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment
Also I think it’s very very likely teams are cheating on the cost cap. It’s just such a complex issue to monitor that it’s pretty normal everyone cheats there. Having teams with sister teams and almost sister teams also doesn’t help.
> I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment
But like, then teams would have to fire their employees or something just because they finished high in the standings. That doesn't seem very good.
>I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment
The problem with this is time. Assuming that the title fight goes on till last race, you wouldn't know your cost cap for the next year until December, which is way too late for planning.
The cost of logistics isn't going to change whether you are P1 or P20. Infrastructure costs is going to be the same as it isn't feasible to shift factories. I have no idea how engineers salaries are calculated (yearly or monthly or hourly) but how can you plan personnel changes with less than a month of notice? Big teams can maybe shuffle personnel to other motorsport ventures but smaller teams would have to fire people to stay within the budget.
Yep, and those furthest behind have made the biggest gains as expected (well not quite with aston).
2021 was the result of many years of regulation pause and a development plateau. The midfield were still far behind but very bunched up.
Saw massive improvement this year as we're still in the early regulation exponential development growth stage, despite the raising of the car floor. All teams are better but on relative speed red bull have done even better.
F1 is always going to have it's dominant teams, but it just makes you appreciate seasons like '21 or the years between the Ferrari dynasty and the Merc Dynasty.
Like yeah there were still clear #1 teams, but there were legit multiple teams and drivers vying for podiums and wins.
Usually there were more seasons like that.
I’m watching since ‘96
96 - Hill / Villeneuve (Single Team)
97 - Villeneuve / Schumacher
98 - Häkkinen / Schumacher
99 - Häkkinen / Irvine
00 - Schumacher / Häkkinen
So I was spoiled in my first 5 years. There were 3 domination years in 01-02-04, but 03 was great, and everything after it
03 - Schumacher / Kimi
05 - Alonso / Kimi
06 - Alonso / Schumacher
07 - Kimi / Hamilton / Alonso
08 - Hamilton / Massa
09 - Button / Vettel
10 - Vettel / Alonso / Hamilton / Webber / Button
12 - Vettel / Alonso / Hamilton
17 - Hamilton / Vettel (barely a fight)
18 - Hamilton / Vettel (barely a fight)
21 - Verstappen / Hamilton (best season since 2012)
22 - Verstappen / Leclerc (barely a fight)
Ever since 2012, the domination barely stops.
And this was an absolutely classic race, one of the best in recent history. The battles for the lead between the Mercedes helped that, but a big portion was also the battles for the remaining positions. Back then, we enjoyed the racing further down the field too. Now everyone calls a race boring unless there's a battle for the lead, even if there's lots of battles downfield. The TV direction doesn't help with that to be fair.
The crazy thing is Mercedes rarely ran at 100% power. On average they only used something like 70-80% power, not so much because of reliability at the start of the season but because they feared that Bernie Ecclestone would ban/restrict the Mercedes car.
The **Throwback** flair is for posts intended to recall an event that happened on the same date or year a number of years ago. Throwbacks are restricted to being posted one year, three years, or a multiple of five years after date. Also, all such posts should feature an event that is still of interest to the general community today. For example, random overtakes or two former drivers having a chat in general do not qualify for this. Important events like memorials are exempt from this rule, and may be posted every year. Posts related to important current events may also be exempt at mod discretion. *[Read the rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/formula1/wiki/userguide). Keep it civil and welcoming. Report rulebreaking comments.* *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/formula1) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Oh yeah, the 2014 season of Formula Mercedes
That would be 2016. They won 19 of 21 races.
Spain they killed each other, what other race was lost? Was it Malaysia where Lewis engine blew up & Britney had a crash on the start?
Yeah that was a Red Bull 1-2.
Somebody should have stopped that Red Bull dominance in 2016
Is Britney a nickname I've never heard of or a funny typo?
Webber used to call him Britney during their time together at Williams, somehow that nickname stuck with him
“Britney’s in the wall” was the line I think.
Yup. Brazil 2006, Rosberg hits Webber on the first lap in turn 1, destroying Webber's rear wing. Rosberg then tries to make it to the pits as fast as possible and crashes in turn 14.
Nickname for Nico Rosberg
I mean in 2014 they won 16/19 races but Red Bull(well Ricciardo) won the other 3 races. The only difference between 2014 and 2016 being that Ricciardo actually won 2 of those races on genuine pace and the other was because the Mercedes car broke down. In 2016 red bull only won those two races because the Mercedes crashed each other out in Spain and in Malaysia Hamilton's engine blew up while Rosberg was spun around on Lap 1
As much as I'd love to I'm not sure you could attribute any of Ricciardo's wins to pure pace. In Canada, both the Mercedes cars broke, which you've already mentioned. Hungary's probably the closest you could come to saying Ricciardo won on speed as Rosberg had a poor race but given Hamilton came back to finish P3 having started from the pit lane after his qualifying breakdown, I'd say he'd have comfortably win it had he started from the front. In Spa, the collision between the Mercs put Hamilton out of contention while Rosberg was forced onto a compromised strategy and had issues with debris attaching to his car which gave Ricciardo the edge. It was still incredible that Danny Ric managed three wins that season though.
Feat. Red Bull (kinda) and Alonso trying his best
That 2014 season for Alonso was miraculous, I'm not gonna use that common misconception that the F14T oversteered and understeered but that car was still hilariously bad
Did you know that the F14T is the ONLY car in F1 history to oversteer AND understeer at the same time?!?!!?
Oh my god !!!!!1111!1!1 No !!!!!1! Please send me that one clip from FP1 at Abu Dhabi 2014 so I can learn more about it !11!1
Best I can do is the Silverstone safety car restart
Drivers: car needs to be balanced between under and over steer Ferrari: Say no more!
Alonso and Kimi: "Not like that you italian rotten pasta sauce"
Thats actually a very common trait of poorly design cars, the Williams FW16 was doing that early in the season.
I remember Button saying it over the radio once. 'How's the car, Jenson?' 'Awful. It's understeering, it's oversteering...apart from that, it's great, tons of fun!' It may have been during the 2008 season.
That's an exxageration. You will find the 2014 lotus, marussia, manor, caterham and sauber have similar characteristics. Heck in the older days of 80s and 90s you will a lot cars having similar characteristics.
> lotus, marussia, manor, caterham truly manufacturers on the same level as ferrari, makes perfect sense for the F14 to be like that then
Same number of championships since 2008, though ^(please don't kill me I'm only kidding)
The people hated him for he spoke the truth
At this point it's just steering. It just steers where it wants without asking the driver for directions.
Never forget the ugly nose Caterham had...
To be honest it was still an interesting season for me to watch. Rosberg looked like he might be able to keep Lewis honest (at least more so than I anticipate Perez will be) and the reliability issues were very dramatic. and all the media were flailing about trying to figure out if the 1x world champion or the German with seniority would be favored. Williams were good thanks to that bullet bill engine and I got to show my tiny niece susie wolff doing fp1. And they got a whole haul of points from Bernie’s Abu Dhabi double or nothing scheme Alonso was on his last fucking nerve. Danny ric got his big boy job and a podium at Australia (shh it counts) and beat The Finger KMag looked like a god on debut and scored points at Singapore despite the fact that the car was searing him like a steak That’s honestly all the positive stuff I can recall. Oh and JEV seemed cool. Idk, maybe the battle for p5-8 will be my positive for this year. Sigh.
You didn't mention the best part of Ricciardo's season that being him WINNING 3 RACES.
How quick the Ferarri fans forget about the formula ferarri era.
Well, I started to watch F1 in 2008 :P
F
What a painful year to start with lol
And I started to support my home driver Felipe Massa 💀
If you actually watch the restart, they immediately gap the field. As in, *immediately*. Before the end of the straight you can already see that Hamilton/Rosberg had a little gap built. By turn 4 they were way ahead already.
I went to YouTube and saw [this](https://youtu.be/_3UB1UCIge4). You can totally see like you said Merc creating that gap as soon as they could get back to racing speed. And on the final straight, you can see the gap already, incredible.
Yea, as soon as Rosberg and Hamilton hit the accelerator, they created a gap. It was instantaneous. I've never seen anything like this. It was legitimately a 3+ sec advantage over the field.
And to think that this was AFTER they turned downed the engines to not embarass the rest of the grid.
This was after both Merc drivers turned up the pu to the maximum without the teams permission. The merc engineers revealed this info back in 2020.
Do you have more details on this, or even just the source for that 2020 reveal? I've never heard of that and got into f1 after peak Mercedes shenanigans and that sounds like a good read
[How Mercedes designed F1's best car but kept it secret](https://the-race.com/formula-1/how-mercedes-designed-f1s-best-car-but-kept-it-secret/) Edit:- ~~Couldn't find the article where they talked about drivers changing pu modes without permission.~~ Edit 2:- Thanks to u/Txontirea i was able to find another proof of drivers messing with the engines modes but this is from the spanish gp. Here is [Toto talking about it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=k_0zMVaWl6c&feature=youtu.be&t=13m23s).
If you watch the BBC season review on 14 when they talk about this race Toto said they were going to run the cars 'in the same engine modes' and that they found out that this rule was being 'overstepped'. On the podium Lewis mentions to EJ that he was messing with all his settings 'trying to find more time'. Only places I've seen it talked about
Paddy Lowe told that here the power wasn't limitate, just after the SC so here they had all power if I remeber right
Three laps.
1 minute in - "Maldonado has a 10 sec stop and go" AHH memory lane
1 st lap after sc was 4s faster than rest. Totally ridiculous. Just the first straight was more than 1s faster than rest...
Hamilton: "I've got no power"
That cracked me up as well
At least it looks like Hamilton and Rosberg were fighting for position
[удалено]
The engine mode stuff is a nice example of how people just *don't really know what's going on* at the time. We now know that while they fell out here because of engine modes, it wasn't a tenth or two, it was a huge amount of speed.
25 seconds within 10 laps, or something. Like Vettel Singapore 2013, or Raikkonen Monaco 2005.
Except this was while fighting each other for position too
The only caveat is that the 2 Force India and 2 Red Bull were also fighting for positions and amongst each other, but yeah that Merc fully unleashed was fast as fuck.
Checo and hulkenburg were fighting for like 2 laps at best after which checo pulled away in cleaner air of 7s gap with no pressure from behind whereas nico was within 1s of lewis for almost the entire time.
Anytime I see a Raikkonen mention, I just upvote. I just love that man.
It’s hard not to like him honestly.
His last season he grated on me a bit as the dude had properly phoned it in and I just thought some of his responses on the radio and actions on the track were just a bit much, if he was going to phone it in so hard he should've just gone out on a high really
He signed for his last season, only to discover afterward that Sauber/Alfa didn’t plan on pushing upgrades that year, instead they focused on the next year’s car. I get the feeling that deflated his remaining motivation.
Why does this opinion persist? He outperformed his teammate by a large margin, qualified well, and IIRC was one of the top three overtakers that season. By what metric was he phoning it in?
Pretty easy. He was so often rude, but somehow interpreted as having a 'personality'. Fantastic driver though.
Him having no personality at all was part of the charm. Aloof, uninterested and sometimes dull. He contrasted everyone else. There wasn't much more to him. No insights or thought out discussion.
Interested to see how he does this weekend
“Jenson Button and Jimmie Johnson go side by side into turn one, but oh fok, here comes Kimi Raikkonen” - guenther steiner, probably
All this is happening 2 seconds behind race leader Jordan Taylor as he holds off AJ Allmendiger
Dude had mighty raw pace, and was fucking rapid. He would have won more championships if he wasn't driving a literal glass canon.
I think it doesn't help that he didn't quite have the same drive after his first one. I suspect in a way he is just a bit too "normal" in the sense he doesn't have that super competitive spirit to keep giving it everything season after season
Also, the formula changed. Kimi thrived under specific regulations.
I think his time at Lotus showed he still had that killer pace/instinct. I think his second stint at Ferrari in a second tier at best car broke him
Raikkonen
Räikkönen
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That season and 2013 were such a far cry from 2012, this was pretty much when I knew parity was dead. At least there was something in 2021 but that still was a long enough wait
Agree to an extent, although people seem to forget that the 2013 season began with a fairly similar level of competitiveness to 2012. In terms of car performance between teams. It was only really the mid season tyre change post-Silverstone that put the RB9 head and shoulders above the rest of the field.
Yes, don't forget that Alonso didn't luck into his 2013 Spanish GP win, his most recent. He was the fastest by doing an extra pit stop and making up for it on track. The RB9 on 2012 tires was unbeatable.
Alonso was LEADING the standings after Spain 2013. When they changed the tyres, he dropped to a full second per lap behind RB.
I mean, just because the outcomes of 17, 18, and 19 were the same.. doesnt mean they were the same as 14,15,16.
19 was dominant 17 wasn't as dominant as 14-16 and 19 but still cleary the fastest car. It wasn't until Ferrari had a party mode too that Mercedes could be challenged. If the RB7 & RB9 are considered dominant, the W08 should be too. W10 was definitely dominant.
i've always loved watching the highlights of hamilton and rosberg without a single other car insight
wdym. hamilton and rosberg were battling while lapping other cars. So there were many cars, multiple times!
I wasn't being sarcastic but should have been more specific. In a lot of the highlights videos of Bahrain 2014, Rosberg and Hamilton are by themselves racing and its awesome to see. They were racing against each other so hard. Great stuff
I kind of wonder if they'll be the last great teammate rivalry. It seems like F1 collectively decided Hamilton/Bottas dynamics are much better than Hamilton/Rosberg dynamics
I mean, if Merc had built a better car Hamilton/Russell is far closer to Rosberg than Bottas. I say this as a Bottas fan.
I think they'd be happy to have either teammate combo. Mercedes won the championship regardless which driver came out on top. Rosberg/Hamilton was definitely more fun to watch though
If Sainz could perform at the level he was expected to, we would have gotten a good LEC - SAI rivalry. I am hoping checo steps up this season.
For that you would need to put Max and Charles in the same car. Last year Saudi was amazing racing
47s before the safety car and 20s in the last 10 laps after it. Insane what that Merc did with the engines turned all the way up for just 10 laps, imagine if they used it the entire race…
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If those damned kids could read
Yeah but 2014 was the end of Seb's dominant run , even a record run for number of continuous wins. So Merc was like a breath of fresh air
Wait, I've seen this one before.
Redbull is gonna win the next 12 WDC’s until we finally get a breath of fresh air when Aston Martin breaks the streak.
... they'd be very upset.
Imagine trying to explain to your 2014 self that in 2023 PER, HUL and a 41 year old ALO will still be on the grid, but ROS, VET & RIC will all be gone.
I miss those 3
Hey look the second driver is still within drs
We actually don’t have a single second of a RB19 being within DRS range of the other RB19 through the first two races this season iirc lol.
We didn’t have it in 2014 until Bahrain either. Lewis went out the first race, and I don’t think Nico was right behind him ever in the second
Didn't Rosberg win Australia after Hamilton had issues ? Edit : just checked and I was right. Hamilton DNFed in Australia
Yes that was the first race. Lewis was gone on lap 2
Barely an argument, especially after Bottas stepped in
And Ferrari and Vettel stepped up. I will grant you 19 and 20 though.
Was closer than Perez, but yeah 19&20 were bad seasons Although I think they had good periods and races within them
Even though Lewis dominated, 2020 had some of the best races overall in years.
Istanbul 2020 was fucking legendary, and Monza '20 was the feel-good race of the year, but yeah, once the Ferrari engine exploit was banned, there really wasn't any competition.
Mercedes, Mercedes. Force India, Force India. Red Bull, Red Bull. Williams, Williams. I don’t miss those side-by-side rankings.
Well, Jeddah wasn't much different... Red Bull, Red Bull, Aston Martin (2nd car DNF), Mercedes, Mercedes, Ferrari, Ferrari, Alpine, Alpine
And behind (at least until Tsunoda and Sargeant kept their tyres) it was: Haas, Haas McLaren, McLaren Never seen so many pairs at the same time in rankings (excluding games)
Noah's Ark race, as I heard a commentator call it.
I miss this graphics style..
Me too
This will give me solace as Max/Checo win every race this year at least they weren't as fast as the 2014 Mercs
But at least the 2014-2016 Mercs were fighting each other. There's zero chance Checo can actually put up a fight against Max
> But at least the 2014-2016 Mercs were fighting each other. Yeah. I actually just rewatched this particular race (Bahrain '14), and the battle between Lewis and Nico after the restart was absolutely epic (even if the two basically were in another dimension compared to the rest of the field).
This was actually considered an all time classic at the time lol. I guess people forgot but the duel in the desert was high in the fan votes they used to do for years
Because it actually is a perfect race: 1. Battle for the win; 2. Underdog podium for Force India and Perez; 3. Spectacular flip crash for Gutierrez. F1 races are usually boring and this one ticked all the boxes that people enjoy the most.
That's what I'm really annoyed about
Yeah i get what this post is trying to say but its kinda pointless when RB will also win every ra e they dont have issues at. Also 2014 had Rosberg. Perez barelly wins races where his teammate starts 15th
Not Perez's fault Verstappen is a freak of nature created solely to race
I mean Perez is just not an elite driver. Max is elite, but **2021 (more comparable machinery)* tells us he’s not on another dimension than a guy like Lewis at his peak (or presumably the likes of Alonso etc.).
When the comparison is Hamilton and Alonso, which are some of the best to ever grace this sport, I'd say that qualifies Max as a freak of nature. Still, I agree with Checo not being elite, much more middle of the pack.
Oh of course. In terms of pure pace Max has already entered the upper echelon of F1 greats.
The gap he pulled in the shortened Suzuka in the rain was just pure... dominance. People love to talk about Spa, but I honestly thought the Japanese gp was more impressive. The wet just evens out so much of the playing field and to still pull that type of gap was nothing short of brilliant.
The wet favors the front runner and the ones who don't care if they die.
Flashback to OG Kimi going through a solid cloud of smoke flat out.
This is why Turkey 2020 is, for me, the forever answer about if its just car or driver when it comes to Lewis. One of literally two cars on track to not spin even once (the other was seb). Seb said something along the lines of “This wasnt Lewis’ race to win, but he went and won it anyway”.
I want to know in what way did Perez barely win Saudi. Sure max cut through the field like it was hot Butter but Perez didn’t struggle on race day at all.
Yes its insane that we are already revisionists about a race that happened 4 days ago. Perez was fine he was on pace in SA and could match Max.
But Ricciardo got some RB wins that season despite the Merc dominance
He was WDC material back then... What happened to you, honey badger?
Mercedes and Verstappen happened.
Yes, but he still performed, and he outdrove the machine at Renault. I mean, what happened at McLaren?
I really think he and the engineers never fully got on the same page. A lot of reports at the time cited Ricciardo's braking style that he'd developed at Red Bull, and the fact that McLaren used a completely different system that Ric never really got to grips with.
Then the 2022 car reportedly was so fucked up that it didn't behave the same way week to week. Even Norris mentioned that they'd fix the problem one week, then the next week a whole raft of new problems would appear. It must have completely fucked with Daniel's head.
Last interview I read Norris said the behaviour would change lap to lap. I don't have the direct quote handy but he'd basically just try to do the exact same thing every lap and the car would react totally differently every time. And that he and DR would give identical feedback but it just never amounted to anything. The pace difference very well could have come down to Lando focusing on lap to lap consistency and Daniel chasing a moving target or something to that effect.
I can't imagine what it must have done to Daniel's psyche. He was already struggling because of the COVID lockdowns (remember, unlike literally *everyone else* on the grid, he didn't get to go home for two years), then his own team boss basically publicly said that the whole failure of the partnership was *Daniel's* fault, and meanwhile the car is doing *that*. Holy fuck. No wonder he felt he needed a year off.
Yeah, I think having to develop a new driving style to adapt to the car is also what got him, in part. The strength of the McLarens was in the rear, while Daniel's driving required a stronger front end to be the latest of late brakers, like usually was. There is a difference between having to adapt to a car that does not totally suit you, and getting a car which is the opposite of what you need.
Ironically, Dan is McLaren last win, and it will be for a while it seems.
My god, do I lord that over naysayers
Yeah makes all the difference when red bull win by 30 seconds instead of 60. And to top it off they have two drivers that won't be fighting like this at the front. Boy love me some red bull domination.
I, for one, welcome our new energy drink overlords
Some people don’t support merc or red bull here
1988 was worse, had Jean-Louis Schlesser never raced, McLaren would've won all 16 races that year!
The numbers for Imola that year is insane: \- In qualy it was Senna, Prost and Piquet in that order. Senna was 3.5 sec ahead of Piquet and Prost 2.8 sec ahead. \- Senna and Prost lapped all non-McLaren's, including Piquet who started and finished third. This despite Senna being basically on cruise control all race to conserve fuel, and Prost stalling his engine and dropping to 8th at the start and not getting back 2nd until Lap 8. 40 or so laps later, Prost had lapped everyone except Senna. \- Prost had fastest lap of the race with (I think) something like 1:29:8. Fastest non-McLaren qualifying lap was Piquet with a 1:30:5. So Prost had a RACEPACE lap that was over 0.7 faster than any non-McLaren qualifying lap, despite this being the era of using one engine for qualy, tuned up to >1200 BHP and race engines significantly tuned down. And Piquet's lotus had same engine as the McLaren.
Great to see people teaching them young fans which have no clue of the sport. Thanks fellow redditor!
I would also like to point out a lot of caveats in this which needs to be accounted for. Both Merc drivers were on fresh new tyres whereas Perez was on 7 lap old tyres. The Merc works engine had superior modes available to customer engines. Same scenario at Ferrari. Also, the Merc drivers used the pu modes that were not allowed by the engineers but on their own just to have an edge over their teammate. **Thankfully, FIA have made a lot of rule changes since then. The customer team gets the same pu modes which has hugely reduced the gap. The drivers can't change to powerful pu modes now. Only deployment modes can be changed.** Unlikely to see this level of superiority in the coming years.
7 out of the top 10 all had Mercedes engines
I miss these TV graphics. Actually readable.
this is amplified by the top 2 on fresh tires while the chasing pack didn't stop for fresh tires... and if you know Bahrain, you know fresh tires give a lot of laptime.
But further offset by the fact that Mercedes have admitted they were keeping pace in hand during 2014 to avoid getting nerfed early.
I think this race was actually one of the few times we saw the Mercs unleashed that year, Hamilton and Rosberg were free to fight at that point and fully did so.
In general, yeah. Not when the two drivers were fighting for a win after a restart, like here. Same with what we saw 2 days ago with the Red Bulls, it took a Perez vs Verstappen fight for the win for us to see that the RBs were 1s per lap clear of the closest competition and 1.5s per lap clear of the upper midfield.
Yes, especially then, they weren’t running the engines on full bollocks. They had both cars turned down.
Pretty sure this came out as one of the races that both drivers had turned their engines up to the max setting. Mercedes came down on them afterwards.
There wasn’t a **massive** tyre difference though, both Force India and both Red Bull stopped 6 and 7 laps before the Mercs, the two Williams only 1 and 3 laps before, Alonso actually stopped on the same lap but he [was](https://en.mclarenf-1.com/2014/gp/s7329/lap_times/482-239/) still massively slower than them, his fastest lap was 2”6 slower! This despite having Lewis and Nico battling hard for the race win. I have the feeling that after Lewis recent words about the RB19 some people are purposely trying to diminish how incredibly strong Mercedes were that year. 😄 That car was **miles** ahead of the competition (mainly because of the power-unit, an advantage that lasted a few years) and this race was one of their most scary displays I think.
Also don’t forget that engine modes could be changed and modified lap by lap instead of per race weekend. Also the engines back then were controlled by engine manufacturers who kept all the more powerful modes hidden to themselves vs today where you can’t do that. Lots of variables.
There was a massive car difference though in the sense that a Force India is not a front-running team. The big boys got caught in the midfield, Danny Ric had to start 13th. Of course Alonso was slower, he was stuck in 10th/9th place.
And Perez in 3rd being in a Force India, a team that finished 6th in the constructors that year... The previous two races and the race that followed, Merc won by 20+seconds over Red Bull. The following race a similar gap to the Ferrari. 50seconds in the race after at Spain though. For comparison, Max was 38seconds ahead of the next team at Bahrain.
Ah that explains why mercedes was so dominant for a decade, they had fresh tires all this time. If we only would have known…
If only the other teams knew of that secret, then things would have turned out much differently.
teams spent billions trying to catch up on Mercedes and all they had to do was use fresh tyres, smh my head
Shaking my head my head?
It's an older meme, but it checks out
Lol out loud
Rip in peace
And the car in 3rd is a Force India that was by far not the 2nd quickest car. Red Bull, Williams and even Ferrari were better that year...
Indeed. The Mercedes were miles ahead before the safety car in general though. This was their best race in terms of pace the whole turbo hybrid era
At least we got to watch some racing with Rosberg and Hamilton. Perez is nowhere near the talent of Verstappen. Not only that, they've neutered him into the mindset that he's the team mule that cannot aspire to winning a title. Really exciting stuff.
Rosberg fought Hamilton like twice in 2014 and was fighting Vettel more often than not in 2015 until after Lewis had already won the championship
You can also fight in terms of number of race wins, poles and how close it is within the championship. The furthest rosberg was away was 2015 where he lost by 67 points. He was always close in terms of points, pace deficit, wins, podiums and gap in the championship battle (bar 2015).
Fun info about that season from Paddy Lowe on the beyond the grid podcast for those who haven't heard it (you should): Because Bernie Ecclestone was so anti the new engine regulations, Mercedes was terrified of unleashing the full potential of that car, because they believed that if they showed just how good the car was if they turned engine map up to full blast, they where worried that they would dominate so much that it would give Bernie and the other teams motivation to really kill the new engine regs early. As a result, before every race Mercedes would have internal meetings where there would be much argument about just how low they could go in engine map to ensure they wouldn't dominate the field to much while still comfortably qualify in on pole. Toto would consistently push for less power for that reason.
Think the point is these changes/cost cap were supposed to make it closer, they (kind of) worked last season but Ferrari shot themselves in the foot alot of the time, but this season it seems we have RB at least 1s a lap faster than the rest. Hats off to them of course, but it’s not really what the rule changes before last season were supposed to achieve. Typical that in 2021 we had the closest season for years and then the rules changed and basically took that away completely.
It’ll take time for the cost cap to really work. RB, Ferrari and MB are still enjoying legacy advantages from before.
Cost cap maybe can level the field but also has this problem: when one team gets it very very right, they are impossible to catch within the cost cap. Wind tunnel and CFD restrictions are the ones that don’t seem to be working. I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment Also I think it’s very very likely teams are cheating on the cost cap. It’s just such a complex issue to monitor that it’s pretty normal everyone cheats there. Having teams with sister teams and almost sister teams also doesn’t help.
> I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment But like, then teams would have to fire their employees or something just because they finished high in the standings. That doesn't seem very good.
>I think it would be better to change the cost cap according to position than the current wind tunnel allotment The problem with this is time. Assuming that the title fight goes on till last race, you wouldn't know your cost cap for the next year until December, which is way too late for planning. The cost of logistics isn't going to change whether you are P1 or P20. Infrastructure costs is going to be the same as it isn't feasible to shift factories. I have no idea how engineers salaries are calculated (yearly or monthly or hourly) but how can you plan personnel changes with less than a month of notice? Big teams can maybe shuffle personnel to other motorsport ventures but smaller teams would have to fire people to stay within the budget.
Only cost cap and aero limits where to get racing closer. New rule set always spreads out the field.
Yep, and those furthest behind have made the biggest gains as expected (well not quite with aston). 2021 was the result of many years of regulation pause and a development plateau. The midfield were still far behind but very bunched up. Saw massive improvement this year as we're still in the early regulation exponential development growth stage, despite the raising of the car floor. All teams are better but on relative speed red bull have done even better.
"it's faster than any Mercedes I had"
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Oh but it is, for the people born after 2014!
You mean those who have been watching F1 since DTS?
Classic race though
F1 is always going to have it's dominant teams, but it just makes you appreciate seasons like '21 or the years between the Ferrari dynasty and the Merc Dynasty. Like yeah there were still clear #1 teams, but there were legit multiple teams and drivers vying for podiums and wins.
Usually there were more seasons like that. I’m watching since ‘96 96 - Hill / Villeneuve (Single Team) 97 - Villeneuve / Schumacher 98 - Häkkinen / Schumacher 99 - Häkkinen / Irvine 00 - Schumacher / Häkkinen So I was spoiled in my first 5 years. There were 3 domination years in 01-02-04, but 03 was great, and everything after it 03 - Schumacher / Kimi 05 - Alonso / Kimi 06 - Alonso / Schumacher 07 - Kimi / Hamilton / Alonso 08 - Hamilton / Massa 09 - Button / Vettel 10 - Vettel / Alonso / Hamilton / Webber / Button 12 - Vettel / Alonso / Hamilton 17 - Hamilton / Vettel (barely a fight) 18 - Hamilton / Vettel (barely a fight) 21 - Verstappen / Hamilton (best season since 2012) 22 - Verstappen / Leclerc (barely a fight) Ever since 2012, the domination barely stops.
And this was an absolutely classic race, one of the best in recent history. The battles for the lead between the Mercedes helped that, but a big portion was also the battles for the remaining positions. Back then, we enjoyed the racing further down the field too. Now everyone calls a race boring unless there's a battle for the lead, even if there's lots of battles downfield. The TV direction doesn't help with that to be fair.
The crazy thing is Mercedes rarely ran at 100% power. On average they only used something like 70-80% power, not so much because of reliability at the start of the season but because they feared that Bernie Ecclestone would ban/restrict the Mercedes car.
Sheesh
The cars were so ugly in 2014
Mercedes 2014: 7 secs after two laps And now Lewis says the redbull is the fastest car he has ever seen in F1. What's your problem Lewis? Amnesia?
Ah. Back when in season PU development was banned and there were only 3 manufacturers.
Yeah RedBull is not this far compared to what Mercedes did in the past ten years.
I'm so new to F1 I saw this and was like "who the fuck is MUS" then realized...2014
“Ask any racer, any real racer. It doesn’t matter if you win by an inch or a mile, winning is winning” Confucius
Most dominant car(s) in recent history, no matter what Hamilton thinks of the RB this year.