The winners and losers of F1's silent war

Not since May's Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona has Formula 1 visited what might be called a 'classic' or conventional circuit.

Interim visits to Monaco, Canada and Azerbaijan don't provide a proper read on where particular cars sit in F1's overall competitive standing.

Sure, they all provide tests of low-speed performance and braking power, while the straights in Montreal and Baku bring aerodynamic efficiency and pure engine grunt into play, but these tracks are otherwise atypical.

This is the justification Marcus Ericsson used to repel questioning of Sauber's struggles since it introduced a major update to the C36 in two parts at the Spanish and Monaco GPs.

"We've only really run the big update package we got for Monaco in Monaco, Montreal and Baku - three sort-of street tracks," he said. "It will be quite interesting to see on a more normal track, where it's not quite [so] bumpy and walls everywhere, if this package is working a bit better than we've seen the last few races."

The Red Bull Ring is dominated by medium and high-speed cornering challenges, which will flex the cars' aerodynamic muscles much more than Monaco, Montreal or Baku, but teams must also deal with running at altitude, which makes the aerodynamics less efficient, robs the brakes of cooling, and also forces the turbos to work that much harder to produce equivalent power. This effect is not as extreme as we see in Mexico, but it's on that scale.

That places a premium on having a strong engine to pull you up the hill from the exit of the final corner to Turn 1 and then the long climb from Turn 1 to what is now called the Turn 3 hairpin. The lack of heavy braking around the majority of the lap means you need decent efficiency from the energy recovery systems too. Extra laps are needed to recharge the batteries to give the drivers full deployment for their fast laps.

This is not a maximum downforce track, where you just stick on everything you have aero-wise and don't care for the drag penalty. The cars are in a narrow window in terms of their aero maps, so this will provide a good test of who is developing their machines efficiently and intelligently. All the teams will be looking to the Austrian GP to get a better read on where they stack up since that last big raft of updates in Spain two months ago.

PURE PACE PERCENTAGE RANKING FROM BARCELONA
1. Mercedes 100.000
2. Ferrari 100.064
3. Red Bull 100.704
4. McLaren 102.399
5. Force India 102.427
6. Williams 102.619
7. Haas 102.754
8. Toro Rosso 102.807
9. Renault 102.840
10. Sauber 103.353

This is how Formula 1's 10 teams stacked up against each other after Q3 at Barcelona, with the best lap time set by each car around the Catalunya circuit expressed as a percentage.

The gap between Mercedes and Ferrari was very narrow, with Red Bull left in a no-man's-land between the front and the midfield, McLaren narrowly topping the tight midfield group thanks to Fernando Alonso's phenomenal qualifying performance, and Sauber cast adrift at the back.

Since Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel engaged in their epic scrap for victory in Spain, Ferrari took the helm with a one-two finish amid Mercedes' ultra-soft tyre struggles in Monaco, but then slipped back with more challenging weekends in Canada and Azerbaijan.

But it's been close. A cleaner lap from Vettel in Q3 in Canada might have threatened Hamilton for pole, and front wing damage from a touch with Max Verstappen's Red Bull spoiled his race.

Ferrari was uncharacteristically off the pace in qualifying in Baku, but Vettel was right in the hunt for victory until his controversial safety car moment of madness.

Vettel and Hamilton were the two form men again during Friday practice at the Red Bull Ring, Hamilton topping the quicker second session by just 0.147 seconds from his championship arch-rival with a lap well under the circuit record.

PURE PACE RANKING (AUSTRIA FP2)
1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m05.483s
2. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m05.630s
3. Red Bull (Verstappen) 1m05.832s
4. Haas (Magnussen) 1m06.591s
5. McLaren (Alonso) 1m06.732s
6. Renault (Hulkenberg) 1m06.735s
7. Force India (Ocon) 1m06.849s
8. Toro Rosso (Kvyat) 1m06.906s
9. Williams (Massa) 1m07.065s
10. Sauber (Wehrlein) 1m08.782s

If these lap times are converted to a percentage of the fastest we can get a better idea of how the competitive order stacks up compared to Barcelona, as the percentage method eliminates the variation caused by the difference in lap length.

PURE PACE RANKING BY PERCENTAGE
1. Mercedes 100.000
2. Ferrari 100.224
3. Red Bull 100.533
4. Haas 101.692
5. McLaren 101.907
6. Renault 101.912
7. Force India 102.086
8. Toro Rosso 102.173
9. Williams 102.416
10. Sauber 105.038

This suggests Ferrari has dropped away from Mercedes over the past three races and that Red Bull, which has sorted out its chassis since Spain and taken the benefit of recent software and mapping improvements in the Renault engine, has closed the gap.

It also looks as though the entire midfield has moved closer to the front, with Haas suddenly jumping to the head of that group, Renault looking more competitive and Force India and Williams slipping back.

Sauber is embroiled in internal power struggles behind the scenes and seems to have lost further ground to the rest despite updating its car.

The massive caveat in this emerging picture is engine performance. Hamilton's engine started playing up after he completed his performance runs on Friday. Mercedes swapped out a faulty spark plug during the long runs before Hamilton eventually parked up early.

Team boss Toto Wolff confirmed this was Hamilton's oldest engine and therefore it is likely he will be able to go much faster over the rest of the weekend with a fresher unit fitted.

Both Red Bull drivers, both Haas drivers, both Sauber drivers (oh dear), Nico Hulkenberg's Renault and Carlos Sainz Jr's Toro Rosso have all had fresh power units fitted for this weekend, with McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne joining team-mate Alonso in running Honda's latest 'spec 3' engine.

This has probably played a large part - on what remains quite a power-sensitive circuit - in allowing Red Bull, Haas and McLaren to enjoy relatively strong days.

We can probably expect better performances from Williams and Force India, once Williams decides whether to commit to its full update package and both Mercedes customer teams crank up to full power when it counts.

There are suggestions Ferrari will introduce a major engine update to its works cars for the next race at Silverstone, but until then Vettel and team-mate Kimi Raikkonen will have to make do with what they have.

What will be interesting to see is whether they can keep pace with the silver cars as the pace ramps up through the different phases of qualifying. Although the Red Bull Ring's track surface is quite smooth and tyre degradation is low, the shorter straights and faster corners compared to Baku should eliminate the problems Ferrari had with tyre warm-up in Azerbaijan, so it will be all about car set-up, how good a job the drivers do, and whether Ferrari still has enough in the tank engine-wise to keep up with Mercedes.

Raikkonen certainly expects the Scuderia to be in decent shape in Austria, saying its Azerbaijan qualifying struggles were "more connected to the circuit layout and profiles".

"I feel pretty confident we should be up there this weekend," he said ahead of practice. "Last race, qualifying was quite a big difference [to Mercedes], but it was a big surprise how difficult it felt with the tyres and everything. I'm sure it will be a different story here. Our car should be fine - we've been pretty strong everywhere."

Pirelli bringing its softest compounds to Austria, combined with warm weather and some proper corners through which to generate bulk temperature in the rubber, mean the tyres are generally working quite well for most here. As it is one of the teams that struggles most when the tyres are difficult to warm up, this is certainly helping Haas be more competitive.

Ferrari can be sure of not repeating its Baku struggles in this area too, but nevertheless Vettel was clear after Friday's running at the Red Bull Ring that "Mercedes are the favourites".

Hamilton was happy with his car balance from the first laps of the day, while team-mate Valtteri Bottas was pleased with the performance of the updates brought to the W08 here, despite not hooking his own performance run together, suggesting Mercedes is already in a very strong position.

"Evaluating all the new bits we had on the car was interesting and it was good to see we've made progress aerodynamically with the car," said Bottas, who confirmed the car features a new front wing, nose and floor this weekend.

"It was all a good step forward. I struggled myself to put a good lap together, but the car definitely has a lot of pace. If we can finetune everything, we can be really strong tomorrow."

Max Verstappen was fourth quickest, within 0.35s of Hamilton's pace and feeling he could have gone even quicker with a better set-up and without time lost to needing to remove the floor to reconnect a brake wire during the early part of second practice.

Team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was only half a tenth further back, but he expects Mercedes to pull away in qualifying.

"If we can stay in the top five then that is a pretty good result," he said. "It is pretty close - the top five are within four tenths, [but] I am sure Mercedes will turn it up tomorrow. Hopefully we can stay in that fight and we will be happy."

LONG RUN AVERAGE (ULTRA-SOFT)
1. Mercedes (Hamilton) 1m08.767s (9 laps)
2. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m09.211s (8 laps)
3. Red Bull (Ricciardo) 1m09.716s (4 laps)
4. Haas (Grosjean) 1m09.825s (4 laps)
5. Williams (Massa) 1m10.021s (14 laps)
6. Toro Rosso (Sainz) 1m10.079s (3 laps)
7. McLaren (Alonso) 1m10.150s (3 laps)
8. Renault (Hulkenberg) 1m10.385s (7 laps)
9. Force India (Ocon) 1m10.403s (12 laps)
10. Sauber (Wehrlein) 1m11.640s (8 laps)

LONG RUN AVERAGE (SUPER-SOFT)
1. Mercedes (Bottas) 1m08.638s (6 laps)
2. Ferrari (Vettel) 1m09.180s (15 laps)
3. Force India (Ocon) 1m10.140s (12 laps)
4. Haas (Magnussen) 1m10.264s (5 laps)
5. McLaren (Vandoorne) 1m10.472s (3 laps)
6. Williams (Stroll) 1m10.525s (9 laps)
7. Renault (Hulkenberg) 1m10.803s (7 laps)

LONG RUN AVERAGE (SOFT)
1. Ferrari (Raikkonen) 1m09.615s (14 laps)
2. Williams (Massa) 1m10.489s (5 laps)
3. Toro Rosso (Kvyat) 1m10.761s (3 laps)
4. Sauber (Wehrlein) 1m12.113s (5 laps)

The long runs provide a glimmer of hope for the otherwise underwhelming performances of Williams and Force India, but they make miserable reading for Mercedes' chief rivals, which is probably why Vettel sounds a little pessimistic right now.

Hamilton's penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change will put him back to at least sixth on the grid, which creates the likelihood of a Ferrari at least making the front row in qualifying, but that still has to leave team-mate Bottas as the favourite for victory here.

Hamilton described it as Mercedes' best start to a race weekend so far this season, which puts the champion team firmly in the driving seat. Mercedes looks to be getting more on top of what looked to be a tricky car to set up earlier in the campaign. The W08 is developing strongly now and could be about to leave its rivals trailing again.

After a genuinely competitive championship fight with Ferrari so far in 2017, and Red Bull suggesting it might be able to get into the mix with a bit of luck, the signs are suddenly looking much more ominous.