Mercedes fires 2015 warning shot in America

Given its dominance at the start of the season, nobody was surprised to see Mercedes sewing up the constructors' championship with three races to spare.

But what is more of a surprise is that, so close to the end of the season, the Mercedes F1 W05 Hybrid is still capable of being over a second faster than its rivals.

Usually, you would expect the gap to close up over the season. After all, by definition Mercedes had extracted more of the potential from the 2014 regulations than anyone else and therefore had fewer gains to make.

But over seven months into the 2014 season it is still well ahead of the game. And that is a terrifying prospect for any team expecting to be on equal terms with the German manufacturer next year.

What we saw during Friday practice for the United States Grand Prix is proof that Mercedes has a very good handle on what it needs to do to find ever-increasing levels of performance.

Gary Anderson: "If you look at the performance of the cars as a whole, Mercedes has done a very impressive job.

The Mercedes had a clear advantage at Austin during Friday practice © LAT

"But it's not just about having a dominant gap, it's the fact that there are signs that it is able to stretch it.

"When you on the top rung of the ladder, inevitably you don't have as far to climb as when you are at the bottom. But what Mercedes has been able to do over the season in consolidating this gap shows that the team has a very good understanding of what it takes to go quick and keep pushing on.

"The performance level we are seeing from Mercedes now shows that it could still be in a very good position come next year because there are no signs of the development slowing.

"I watched the afternoon session in the fast section around Turn 5/6. Because it's so fast, there's a limit to what you can see the car doing but you could see the difference between the Mercedes and the rest.

"You can talk about power unit performance all you want, and that does have an influence on the handling of the car, but this high-speed section is largely about aero and chassis.

"It reminds us of just how good the Mercedes is. It's a reminder that anyone hoping to catch up next year has a huge amount of work to do, because not only must the existing gap be closed, but its inevitable gains with the 2015 car must be caught too."

OUTRIGHT PACE

The advantage Mercedes had at the top of the free practice timesheets was remarkable, around 1.1s on the soft tyres and a massive second-and-a-half on the slower mediums.

But it was much closer in the group behind, with Red Bull, Williams, Toro Rosso and McLaren separated by just a quarter of a second.

This suggests that qualifying will be a tight battle for positions on the second, third and fourth rows of the grid.

And with Sebastian Vettel starting from the pits thanks to a power unit change, there could also be a dramatic fight for the final Q3 place.

Gary Anderson: "The Mercedes looked comfortably the best car, and of the group of big teams the McLaren probably looked the least impressive.

"It looks like it loads up the front tyre more than others. The fronts load up progressively into ever-increasing understeer, but that balance never seems to shift to the rear so it's asking a lot of the front end.

"The Toro Rosso was an interesting one, particularly in the hands of Daniil Kvyat. The car was imbalanced, with the rear moving around a lot, but while Kvyat was driving it very hard and moving it around, you can't argue with the performance he got out of it compared to Jean-Eric Vergne."

RACE PACE

Unsurprisingly, the Mercedes was the fastest on long-run pace, although Hamilton's problems late-on in FP2 make it impossible to judge how his speed stacked up in comparison to Rosberg.

But given that Williams was unspectacular in terms of its single-lap pace, it perhaps is a surprise to see it snapping at the heels of the Silver Arrows.

The long-run averages below are based on the average of nine lap runs, all on soft-compound Pirellis, with anomalous slow laps disregarded.

This shows that not only was Felipe Massa's run the best by a non-Mercedes, but it was, on average, less than a tenth-of-a-second per lap off Rosberg.

Average long-run pace
1 Mercedes (Rosberg), 1m.44.542s
2 Williams (Massa), +0.090s
3 Red Bull (Vettel), +0.312s
4 Toro Rosso (Kvyat) +0.661s
5 Force India (Hulkenberg), +0.796s
6 McLaren (Magnussen), +0.864s
7 Ferrari (Alonso), +0.921s
8 Lotus (Grosjean), +1.351s*
9 Sauber (Sutil), +2.056s
*The Lotus long-run is based over six laps, as opposed to the nine laps for the others

Red Bull opted to split its strategy across the two drivers, with Vettel completing all of his afternoon running on a set of softs after a late start thanks to a gearbox change and Ricciardo focusing on the mediums.

Williams looked a lot stronger in race trim compared to outright pace © LAT

Vettel's pace meant that Red Bull was third fastest, ahead of a tight midfield pack comprising Toro Rosso, Force India, McLaren and Ferrari.

Gary Anderson: "It's often difficult to know what to make of Williams on Friday, because the team focuses very much on its usual programme.

"On overall laptimes, we didn't see anything special, but things were better on the race runs.

"The car, as always, seems to be moving around a lot - never doing anything wrong as such, but never quite planted like the Mercedes.

"But you would expect it to go well at this track, and we will see on Saturday afternoon whether the qualifying pace is there."

STRATEGY

Practice suggests that the US GP will most likely be a two-stop race.

The soft will be the tyre of choice both for Saturday and Sunday, with the most likely sequence to be two stints on softs, followed by a final one on hards.