The surprise winner of F1's development war

At the start of the season, teams usually talk boldly about development rates and upgrades to come. So with the 2015 season already in the history books, I decided to analyse how the teams progressed - or otherwise - during the course of the year.

Using a comparison of races two, three and four (I have disregarded the first race because it's often not an accurate reflection of performance level), and the final three we also get a picture of how well teams developed.

For this comparison, I use each team's fastest lap of the weekend converted into a percentage of the actual fastest lap from all three days of a GP, in order to ensure the 19 different tracks are equally weighted.

It's clear to see the car dictates overall performance. There are a few times when the set-up will suit one driver more than the other, but at the end of the season the drivers' championship was largely in a two-by-two formation.

MERCEDES
Season average qualifying: 100.072%
Races two, three and four: 100.000%
Last three races: 100.000%
Change: 0%

Mercedes blew everyone's socks off again and was even more dominant than in 2014 - outstripping even Red Bull's best seasons during its years of domination.

The only serious trip-up was in Singapore, where Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel won on merit in a straightforward race. In a way, it's worse for the rest that this happened because it will have made Mercedes have a good scratch of the head and learn something about an area of weakness. That's never a good thing when a team already has such a big advantage.

Both drivers proved the car was right on the money. It's easy to say Hamilton very much had the advantage over Rosberg, but if you look a little more closely it tells a very interesting story. Rosberg won the last three races and he might easily have won the last six - he was on pole position for all of them. And you should turn pole into a race win.

Lewis was a bit heavy-handed with Rosberg at the first corner at Suzuka and Austin, but the bottom line is Rosberg has never turned as many of his pole positions into wins. In the final three races, he put that right.

This could make things interesting at the start of next year.

FERRARI
Season qualifying: 100.775%
Races two, three and four: 100.585%
Last three races: 100.670%
Change: 0.085% loss

The numbers show Ferrari never really deviated far from its season-average deficit and actually ended the season very slightly further away from Mercedes than they started.
One of the reasons for this was that Sebastian Vettel fell in Q1 in Abu Dhabi, as history suggests he would have been quicker than Raikkonen had he made Q3. The German fitted very well into the Ferrari family this year.

But looking at Abu Dhabi, I do have to ask how a team of the standing of Ferrari can underestimate the cutoff time in Q1 then sit in the garage until it is too late to complete lap, or there isn't enough time for a driver to have a second lap if they make a mistake or get blocked.

Looking at the Ferrari car itself, there does appear to be something lacking in the understanding of the airflow around the front end. Since the major aerodynamic rule changes introduced in 2009, every team has shown that getting the nose detail correct is vitally important to the overall aerodynamic performance of the car.

The Ferrari 'long' nose doesn't follow this trend and something must be leading the team in that direction. I would not be surprised if it was the pullrod front suspension and how this affects the airflow coming out from underneath the front of the chassis.

WILLIAMS
Season qualifying: 101.544%
Races two, three and four: 101.028%
Last three races: 101.254%
Change: 0.226% loss

Williams is probably the team whose performance fluctuates the most according to the circuit. The Williams-Mercedes FW37 has not been good in the slow speed corners. Looking at Monaco, for example, it struggled badly there.

And when it was wet, as last year, Williams might as well have stayed in the garage. At Austin, the car was actually slower in those conditions than Marussia!

Williams has the best engine in the pitlane and is a strong team, but consistency is letting it down. This needs to be addressed over the winter or it could easily slip backwards in the constructors' championship after finishing third for the past two seasons.

There have also been too many pitstop errors. While average pitstop times have improved to a good level, there are too many that go wrong. What should bring this problem to a head was the incident in Abu Dhabi when Valtteri Bottas was released as Jenson Button was coming in.

The resulting collision meant a front-wing change and a drive-through penalty and you will not win races making errors like this.

Yes, Williams ended the year with a a performance 'loss' according to our numbers, but this is heavily influenced by the fact the team stopped developing its 2015 car once it felt third place in the constructors' championship was safe.

RED BULL
Season qualifying: 101.521%
Races two, three and four: 101.427%
Last three races: 101.272%
Change: 0.155% gain

This was a year of soul searching for Red Bull, which spent the first half of the season berating engine partner Renault and then seemed surprised Mercedes and Ferrari weren't queuing up to supply the team with an engine - forcing it to stick with Renault for 2016.

A portion of humble pie might be necessary before Red Bull can get a new works power unit deal. Some have predicted Red Bull might have to go it alone to get what it wants, which is not an easy thing to do.

Renault did deserve some criticism at the beginning of the season, but the Red Bull car was hardly perfect and the performance of the sister Toro Rosso team showed it up on several occasions.

Red Bull blamed this on the engine characteristics not suiting its car well. More power, as long as it's delivered correctly, will suit any car but the key at any time is to optimise your package around what you have.

Yes, progress was made during the season. But the numbers show it was nothing remarkable.

FORCE INDIA
Season qualifying: 101.967%
Races two, three and four: 102.287%
Last three races: 101.273%
Change: 1.014% gain

The numbers prove Force India to be the team that made the most progress during the season, improving far more relative to Mercedes than any other team. Yes, I am a bit biased as it started out as my old Jordan team, but the data doesn't lie!

Force India started the season weakly, a result of not having the budget in place to produce the new car as hoped. But the team didn't let this hold it back and made sure to maximise the points scored in the difficult early stages of the season.

During this period, the focus was on the mid-season 'B-spec' upgrade, developed using the Toyota windtunnel, which was a great step.

After finishing fifth in the championship (the last time this team was so high was as Jordan back in 2001), next year the budget has to be in place to allow a very talented group of engineers to put together the package to start the season strongly.

If that happens, there's no reason why it can't look up the table and think about challenging Williams and Red Bull.

LOTUS
Season qualifying: 101.953%
Races two, three and four: 101.645%
Last three races: 102.264%
Change: 0.619% loss

Landing Mercedes engines for 2015 was a real coup for Lotus. You would have thought the management would only go to this length if fully committed to funding the team to the level required to allow a team of people that is very capable to get top results.

But this doesn't seem to be how management in F1 works today. Working personnel can get locked out of the garages while preparing for a race meeting. It's all well and good the management saying the team is fully committed and will put things together in half the time, but it's no way to get good results.

It seems much the same was happening back at Enstone with development works. There's nothing as demoralising for the staff as working your nuts off to find a performance improvement, only to be told it isn't affordable.

It's absolutely soul destroying and it's amazing Lotus has achieved the results it has this year.

The car started the season fairly well, but did drop off. This is no surprise in the circumstances.

Hopefully, someone will have learned something from this year. If and when the Renault deal is finally completed, with the correct funding there's no doubt Enstone can get back to fighting for regular podiums.

Please, Renault, if you do come back in don't think you need to revolutionise this team. Just fund it properly and allow it to do the job it has proved time and again that it's capable of.

TORO ROSSO
Season qualifying: 101.918%
Races two, three and four: 101.770%
Last three races: 101.931%
Change: 0.161% loss

Toro Rosso is a case study for what Red Bull at its best has embodied in F1. Two young, inexperienced and very talented drivers pitted against each other to see what unfolds.

Both Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen had a good car underneath them and this allowed them to stretch their legs and prove their ability and commitment. That's why Helmut Marko, Red Bull's talent scout, chose them.

They didn't spend their time moaning about the Renault power unit's performance problems, and that's very important for their prospects for the future. This is very important because the big boys like Ferrari and Mercedes know it's not all plain sailing in F1 and it's important the driver doesn't just go around shooting their mouth off.

Verstappen is an exceptional talent. If Sainz had a better run of luck, he would have been right there with him. Both are stars of the future and it will be interesting to see who kicks off next year stronger.

Season two is more difficult than the rookie year because everyone's expectations are higher. At the beginning of this season, people expect the newcomers to make a hash of it, so there is less pressure! But Toro Rosso has reaped the rewards of picking two exciting young talents.

SAUBER
Season qualifying: 102.604%
Races two, three and four: 101.917%
Last three races: 102.446%
Change: 0.529% loss

Sauber did what it has done on many occasions historically: started the season fairly strongly and dropped away as the year progressed.

Limited budget and limited development seemed to be the main cause of this, but Sauber is a team with good facilities. It just needs a few more people who know what to do with it.

Mark Smith joined during the year as technical director. He was with me at the start of Jordan and is a good, solid design engineer with a lot of experience from teams like Renault and Red bull. The key is Sauber accepts that his way might be a little different to the Swiss way and allows him to drive it forward.

Talking of technical directors, Andrew Green (Force India), James Key (Toro Rosso) and Mark Smith (Sauber) means that 33 per cent of the grid came through the Jordan School of Motor Racing!

MCLAREN
Season qualifying: 103.026%
Races two, three and four: 102.899%
Last three races: 102.742%
Change: 0.157% gain

McLaren is a 'big' team, yet we only have one team after it in the standings to evaluate as we work through the field in constructors' championship order. So why is McLaren down here?

For all the noise generated during the year, the figures above show the McLaren-Honda partnership didn't make any meaningful progress during 2015. At the first race, it was particularly abysmal, but when you compare the race two-to-four average with the end of the season, there's little difference.

Yes, a lot of the blame lies with Honda and as we have heard many times it is a long-term partnership, but sometimes such alliances turn very short-term if they don't get successful quickly.

At the beginning of the season, I don't think the McLaren was as good a car as it should have been. It also tied Honda's hands by designing a car that was totally committed to a very compact 'size zero' cooling package.

This didn't allow Honda to explore the avenues it might have wanted to try, but Honda never really showed that it knew which direction it wanted to go in anyway.

Next year is going to be a big season for McLaren and Honda. If it doesn't start a lot stronger, Fernando Alonso will lose enthusiasm very quickly. He nearly did it before the end of the current season but a quick glance at his bank balance has probably convinced him he can just about cope for another year.

Hopefully it won't only be his bank manager who is better off for it...

MANOR
Season qualifying: 106.459%
Races two, three and four: 106.534%
Last three races: 106.245%
Change: 0.289% gain

Manor raced a modified version of its 2014 car and, as the numbers showed it performed consistently even if it was well and truly off the pace.

The reliability was good, which in years past would have led to plenty of points. But today, everyone's finishing rates are so good that it added up to zero.

Next season there will be a big change of direction, with John Booth and Graeme Lowdon ousted and Dave Ryan coming in as sporting director. He's a good recruit who comes with a huge amount of experience of how a team needs to work, although he was used as McLaren's scapegoat for the 2009 Australian Grand Prix stewards controversy.

As long as the finances are in place for him to do his job, with a new car for '16 and a latest-specification Mercedes engine, the team should move forward.