Mercedes could only beat itself

Nico Rosberg's winning margin was an illusion. He crossed the line to win the Australian Grand Prix 24.525 seconds ahead of Daniel Ricciardo (whose position would soon prove to be an illusion all of its own), but such was the pace advantage of the Mercedes that it could have been significantly more than that.

This was a race in which Mercedes and Rosberg could only beat themselves. There was not even a hint of a challenge from another car once it became clear to Mercedes that Lewis Hamilton's sister W05, which started on pole position, had a serious and irresolvable engine problem.

Rivals, with some justification, talked in reverent tones about a one second per lap advantage for the Silver Arrows. Those who remained on message in the team were at pains to play this down, but there was little evidence to debunk that claim in Melbourne.

Ricciardo, his every move cheered by the home crowd, was second on the road and later excluded for breaking the maximum permitted 100kg/h fuel flow limit, but he wasn't ever racing for anything more than best of the rest. There were times after the intervention of the safety car when Rosberg would pull more than a second on him in a lap.

Formula 1's new rules revolution always looked tailor-made for Mercedes to thrive, particularly considering the strides it made in the final season of the old regulations. To the great credit of everyone at Brackley and Mercedes-Benz High Performance Powertrains, 30 miles up the road, the Mercedes F1 W05 was the fastest thing in Melbourne.

From the first day of testing, the Mercedes engine has looked ahead of the pack and even after Hamilton's first day in the car at Jerez was cut short by a crash thanks to front wing failure, the team seemed a dead cert to win the season-opener.

Hamilton's problems were clear even before the race start © XPB

Heading into the race, it was a question of which Mercedes would prevail? Hamilton or Rosberg? But what the watching world did not know was that the die was cast long before the race finally got underway after an aborted start caused by Max Chilton's Marussia shutting down on the grid.

One of the cylinders in Hamilton's 1.6-litre turbocharged V6 engine was sick. Hoping against hope that the problem would clear, Mercedes worked through every available electronic means to tackle the problem but the lack of power was obvious off the line.

After rescinding the initial order for him to retire, Mercedes left Hamilton out for one more lap when the cylinder showed signs of some functionality, but it was an unequal fight. The only driver who could have given Rosberg a run for his money was out.

Rosberg quickly established a five-second cushion over Ricciardo's Red Bull, a gap that he rebuilt and then extended further after the safety car period. It looked as easy as they come, but inside the cockpit Rosberg was performing a tricky balancing act.

The 2014 regulations demand drivers to walk a tightrope, trying to manage tyre temperatures as well as keeping a tight rein on fuel efficiency. Ease off too much and you risk the tyres dropping out of the operating window, which brings with it a host of other problems. Go too hard and fuel could be a problem. But Rosberg could not be better equipped to deal with these challenges.

"The problem was I had to push because the tyres were on the edge and coming in and out of their working range," he explained.

"Every time I decided 'OK, let's chill a little bit', the tyres would drop out so I had to push again. That's why I was a bit inconsistent, because I could never afford to lie back. So it wasn't the easiest of races as a result. It was quite difficult, actually."

Rosberg was able to control his lead margin © XPB

Rosberg was revelling in the feeling of having the best car in the field and talking to him after the race it was clear he'd be happy to jump in a plane, land in Kuala Lumpur and head straight into free practice for the Malaysian Grand Prix given the chance.

That his win looked so straightforward is testament to the quality of his drive. As the radio traffic attested, there were concerns about front-left tyre graining. This hadn't been a problem during practice, but didn't come as a great surprise.

"We were expecting it because of the core temperatures," he said. "When that came, then the rear tyres also cooled down because I couldn't push as much, so it was like a spiral effect. I wasn't sure about that, but was reassured when they told me that everyone behind was having the same trouble. "

With the graining phase lasting only three or four laps each time, it was nothing more than a passing distraction for Rosberg. After making a perfect restart when the safety car, deployed to clear up the remains of Valtteri Bottas's right-rear wheel rim, pulled in, the gap between Rosberg and Ricciardo briefly stabilised. But while the Red Bull pace dropped off, the Merecedes kept motoring and a gap on lap 19 of 4.5s was up to 10s six laps later.

The only thing that could have given Rosberg a real headache was Hamilton. So had both Mercedes been in the race, would Rosberg still have won? It's impossible to say, as it was nip and tuck between the pair during the previous two days, with Hamilton always looking like the favourite for pole position but Rosberg having done the quicker race run on Friday afternoon. Hamilton would surely have had the advantage of track position with a normal start and a healthy engine.

Last year, in Malaysia, the spectre of team orders had visited Mercedes when Rosberg was ordered to stay behind Hamilton in the closing stages of the race after his team-mate had burned more fuel attacking the Red Bulls early on. With the pair now confirmed as world championship favourites, it is surely only a matter of time before we see a Hamilton versus Rosberg fight at the front. And how well the team manages the situation.

Red Bull had made rapid strides since testing © XPB

For now, the key thing for Mercedes is to keep winning. The strides made by Red Bull since the end of testing have been massive. The Renault engine's straightline speed deficit could easily account for the pace difference given how strong the Red Bull looks aerodynamically. So what Mercedes cannot afford is for an intra-team scrap to cost points while the going is good.

That Red Bull has come charging up on the rails in a matter of days is a reminder to everyone at Mercedes that complacency is not an option.

Only Lotus and Marussia completed fewer test miles than Red Bull did, with operational and overheating issues in some cases restricting it largely to the garage.

Heading into the race weekend, the feeling for Ricciardo was one of sympathy (as, indeed, it would be after). This was his big chance, his shot at the big time, and he had a car that was not quick enough and wouldn't finish. Yet he showed exactly why he had been promoted with a great lap on intermediates in tricky conditions to start second and stayed there throughout the race. Moments after his trademark grin made its first appearance on an F1 podium, he admitted that the weekend had exceeded even his wildest dreams.

"Definitely," he said. "We'd never done a race distance up until today, so we didn't really have much confidence we'd see the chequered flag, let alone see it in a podium position. Obviously, we still don't have the pace of the Mercedes but it's a result that we will definitely take today and we can make a lot of progress from here."

But in the short term, Mercedes has stronger rivals than Red Bull. You only had to look at the race Ricciardo drove, disinterested in chasing Rosberg even if he could have, but covering those behind. These more credible rivals were just hidden from plain sight during the race.

Bottas showed how quick the Williams really is with his twin charges from the mid-teens into the top six and he was on course to finish second when he glanced the wall at Turn 10.

Bottas charged up the order in style, but was left kicking himself for a costly error © XPB

Bear in mind, this was on lap 10 after starting 15th thanks to a combination of wet qualifying and a five-place grid penalty. It was a small mistake that, while not quite ruinous for the otherwise-inspired Bottas as he salvaged fifth, it was only the fact that his own error caused the safety car that reprieved him.

His drive really was impressive and he was a prolific overtaker, passing Nico Hulkenberg in the closing stages, but the bottom line is he had a car to be second and his own mistake, however small, was what cost him. And he was the first to criticise his own blunder.

At the time, he was five seconds behind Magnussen and 10s behind Ricciardo and, provided he could use the power advantage of the Mercedes to dispatch Fernando Alonso, he would have been clear to emerge as Rosberg's biggest challenger. His fastest lap was only nine hundredths slower than the race-winner's, although Rosberg's mark was set 37 laps earlier, suggesting that he could have lapped significantly faster were it necessary to do so.

But with Williams team-mate Felipe Massa out of the race at the first corner after being torpedoed by Kamui Kobayashi's Caterham, which suffered a braking problem, Bottas was at least able to show signs that Williams might be the only team able to get with a second of an uninhibited Mercedes, perhaps with a deficit closer to three quarters of a second.

With the excellent Ricciardo finally slung out of the race five minutes before midnight, on paper McLaren was best of the rest in the final reckoning. This was thanks to the remarkable Kevin Magnussen who drove with stunning assurance on his debut. Fourth on the grid in wet conditions, he caught the eye for the wrong reasons off the start when his car snapped left as he fed the power in too aggressively, but with that moment gathered up he drove like a 150-race veteran to the finish.

There were those in the team who wondered whether his inexperience would tell and he would fade, but not a bit of it. This was a debut of the highest calibre.

Magnussen's debut will go down in history as one of F1's greatest © LAT

As Magnussen rapidly became bored of being reminded after the race, a certain L Hamilton started fourth and finished third on his F1 debut for McLaren at the same venue. The fact that he was bumped up to second to ruin the oft-quoted symmetry probably came as a huge relief.

McLaren gave Magnussen a few laps with maximum ERS deployment late on and he did get within DRS range of Ricciardo, but couldn't attack and then had to return to a more conservative engine strategy. It didn't matter in the end, given Ricciardo's fate, but he did at least make a serious challenge for the position on the road too.

Team-mate Jenson Button was retrospectively promoted to the podium after a typically assured drive to fourth on the road, aided by some excellent strategy calls from McLaren.

But while you could make a case for several teams to have ended up in McLaren's position, there was no doubting that, right now, Mercedes rules the roost in grand prix racing.

"It was not an easy cruise mode," claimed Mercedes executive director (commercial) Toto Wolff after the race. "Yes, I would say we have a little bit of a margin performance-wise, but it's not an awful lot."

That's most generously called 'managing expectations'. For while there is no guarantee the Mercedes advantage will continue to be of this magnitude, and most likely others will close up, right now Mercedes is in a position it hasn't occupied since the glory days of Juan Manuel Fangio and Stirling Moss in 1955.

Back then, it was Fangio who was the senior partner and Moss the support act. Wonder how it will pan out this time...