Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg 'incredible'

The dominance of the F1 W05 over the rest of the field means Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have engaged in an exclusive battle for the drivers' title so far this season.

A Mercedes has qualified on pole 10 times in 11 races, winning nine of them, and its drivers have rarely dropped points due to problems of their own making.

Mercedes technical chief Paddy Lowe reckons the fact his team has scored six one-two finishes so far is as much a testament to the skill of its drivers as it is to the superiority of the car.

"The record for this year on a mistake basis is incredible with what the two drivers have achieved," Lowe told AUTOSPORT.

"To go through all of those races and sessions with a very low error rate - whether it's accidents, wrong tyres, traffic problems, or some other incident involving stewards, they've done fantastically well this year.

"That shouldn't be taken for granted. If you look up and down the pitlane, every weekend there's people getting in trouble because they're not on it 100 per cent.

"If you want to get a one-two every weekend you need a great car, but you also need to not make any mistakes."

DRIVERS PUSHING EACH OTHER

Rosberg has out-qualified his world champion team-mate seven times (while Hamilton has twice been compromised by technical failures) and leads him by 11 points in the standings.

Lowe said it was impossible to know whether Rosberg was always capable of challenging for the world championship, or if he had raised his game this year to take advantage of the car.

"That's the great intrigue about it, you never will know the answer to that," Lowe added.

"I'm sure there is an effect where drivers push each other to new levels because you see the art of the possible.

"You see the opposite too, when a car is nowhere and drivers are not pushing each other, they just spiral down.

"If you look at Silverstone there were four seconds between the cars in that first stint, and Lewis wanted every sector to be called as a delta to Nico.

"That's the first time this year he's wanted every sector on every lap, and that's the guys pushing each other to the absolute ragged edge."