The winners and losers of F1 2017 so far

With four races in the history books and Ferrari and Mercedes sharing two wins between them, there is still fog shrouding Formula 1 2017's true competitive order - and not just when it comes to the front.

But there are still some clear winners and losers in the season so far. And even though you might expect a more solid pattern to emerge once F1 heads back to Europe and the major Spanish Grand Prix update packages are fitted, it is possible to analyse the performance of the teams so far and come up with some very interesting results.

To do this, we'll use the supertime, which is calculated by taking each car's fastest single time of the weekend and converting it into a percentage of the outright quickest.

These figures can be a little confusing as it's just down to the driver who puts together that one lap, which can be influenced by track conditions or yellow flags getting in the way. But it does paint a clear picture.

So, as there are 10 teams, if we gave points on the same basis as in the race to the lead qualifier, it tells you a little more. My philosophy here is that, if one driver can be in a high position, the second driver should be able to do the same or they are there for the wrong reasons.

You can then repeat this for the race and award points for the first car home for each team. This gives us a picture of where teams need to concentrate development effort. Inevitably, this is distorted by reliability, but getting to the chequered flag is part of the game.

F1 2017 performance analysis

Tracking the pure speed and qualifying/race performance of all 10 teams

MERCEDES

Mercedes has only a slightly faster car than Ferrari in qualifying, but has twice lost race wins with higher levels of tyre degradation. That, combined with a bit of bad luck strategically, has meant that it has only got a 50% win rate.

But Mercedes still leads the constructors' championship, and this is important because of the pay day attached. It needs to concentrate on reducing tyre degradation while maintaining speed.

FERRARI

Ferrari has started this season better than it has for many years and seems far more in control of what it's doing. The car looked very good in pre-season testing and has carried that form into the early part of season.

But the strategy call in Russia was wrong and Ferrari left Vettel out for too long, cutting into the time he had to reel in Bottas. It's these little things that could decide the destiny of the title.

It now needs to find that couple of tenths of a second in outright pace before you could say decisively that Ferrari is the equal of Mercedes.

RED BULL

Red Bull is not where it should be. There's been lots of talk about the Spanish GP upgrade and a big step is desperately needed.

As the numbers above show, Red Bull has generally got the best out of what it has, with one car at least, in both qualifying and the race. But it's just not fast enough.

Yes, the Renault engine is part of the deficit, but on occasion the performance of the Renault works team and Toro Rosso has proved embarrassing.

The FIA reckons that the Renault power unit is within 0.3s of the best, but Red Bull disputes this. Who knows what the exact deficit is, as it varies a lot between qualifying and the race, but it's clear both Renault and Red Bull need to up their game to catch Mercedes and Ferrari.

We're talking around a second or more to get in the fight, and that's a lifetime in F1.

FORCE INDIA

My old team continues to punch above its weight. It is small in comparison to the top three, and even Williams and Renault, but come race day it brings in the points. As the numbers show, race day is Force India's day.

But there is a need to find more performance in qualifying without sacrificing race pace. The team believes it has identified a problem with windtunnel-to-track correlation and the Spain upgrade, which includes a new floor, should solve that.

But my question to the team is this: If it's that easy to identify, why was the problem there in the first place?

WILLIAMS

In a mirror image of Force India, race day seems to produce more problems than qualifying does. Seldom, if ever, do you see a Williams move forward during a race and this has been a pattern for a few seasons.

The car is obviously quick, and in qualifying Felipe Massa has done a strong job. But in the race, there's a struggle to optimise the package. That's not just down to car performance.

Williams must analyse the qualifying performance compared to race performance to understand why. Obviously, finding a few tenths of performance will also help but it needs to make the most of the car on race day.

TORO ROSSO

The Renault engine is a handicap but after running a year-old Ferrari engine last year, it's still a good step forward. The car looks pretty good on track, but the team seems to go from one little drama to another.

Performance in qualifying and the race needs to be improved and there have been hints of a major upgrade for Spain. Technical director James Key is an intelligent chap, very good at pointing the team in the right direction, and Carlos Sainz Jr's home race is going to be a big one for the squad.

RENAULT

Renault has problems from both directions, in that it's supplying Red Bull and Toro Rosso with engines, while at the same time focusing on its own team.

But big progress has been made since last year. In Nico Hulkenberg, it has a driver in the class of Ricciardo and Verstappen, making it easy to measure progress against Red Bull.

There's still a bit more to find, but when you consider how much the team has been diluted over recent years and the need to get all the parts of the jigsaw back, it's a good step.

For its upgrade, it needs a bit of everything. But the focus should be on race pace and reducing tyre degradation.

HAAS

Like Force India, Haas does punch above its weight. But only on occasions, because there is still inconsistency there. But I wouldn't be too critical of that because it's only the team's second season in F1 and it's still building up its database. That said, the brakes have been a problem for too long.

For the next phase of the season, the consistency must improve and the brake problems solved. That doesn't necessarily mean it will allow Haas to move forward, but it is unclear where the team really stands in the overall performance ranking.

SAUBER

Sauber is running a year-old Ferrari engine and is suffering because of it, just as Toro Rosso did last year.

F1 is a very competitive environment, and it's too easy to drop off the bottom of the timesheets. Sauber is also recovering from a lack of investment over the past few seasons, and it takes time to recover from this. It is doing a reasonable job at getting the structure of the company back to where it should be.

All Sauber can do is keep doing what it's doing and concentrate on learning as much as possible this year in preparation for an improvement next year - even with the move to Honda engines.

McLAREN

It's difficult to take a positive approach to McLaren. This is probably its worst season, as not only is it uncompetitive but it's also suffering from a terrible reliability record.

Honda is clearly the main problem, but what I don't understand is why McLaren doesn't step in and take over responsibility for the ERS package.

McLaren has two options: attack and get the best performance from the package or concentrate just on getting it to the chequered flag.

I would go for performance initially and endure the reliability problems, because going quicker will bring a whole new host of reliability problems that can be addressed at the same time.

BOTTAS COMES GOOD FOR MERCEDES

Looking at the Russian GP specifically, Valtteri Bottas rewarded Mercedes for the faith shown in him by Toto Wolff after Nico Rosberg's shock retirement announcement. He won on his 81st start under extreme pressure from Sebastian Vettel, but despite leading from start to finish it was far from a black-and-white race.

Bottas had the upper-hand on Hamilton all weekend and Sochi is a track he is always very comfortable with. The big question now is can he maintain that edge? While he also had pole for the Bahrain Grand Prix, Hamilton had a DRS problem in Q3 so it remains to be seen whether this is a change in the balance of power within Mercedes.

To explain the loss of qualifying advantage for Mercedes, I'm pretty sure whatever set-up changes it made in the Bahrain test have helped its tyre degradation over the long runs. But it might also have taken the edge off qualifying performance, as well as possibly hurting Hamilton more than Bottas.

It shows you, in keeping with the whole season so far, how big an impact small differences can create. After Bahrain, Wollf was talking about having to consider using team orders and Bottas needed to respond to that. By being around half-a-second faster than Hamilton in every session at Sochi, the challenge now is to prove he can deliver top performances at each and every grand prix.

Hamilton will be far from happy with this situation. His team-mate gave him a thrashing and won the race. To tighten the screw a little further, there were two Ferraris between them. All in all, an unusually dismal weekend.

What confuses me most about the race is why Ferrari left Vettel out on track for seven laps after Bottas pitted. During Friday practice, the Ferrari was faster than the Mercedes on the super-softs, so why not get them on the car and give Vettel more time to pressure Bottas into a mistake?

Perhaps Ferrari was hoping for a safety car, virtual or real, but if you are doing that you are just relying on some luck. And luck can go either way.

In the end, this probably made no difference. When one car gets within a couple of seconds of a car of similar performance it becomes impossible to get any closer. Over those 10 laps, Bottas had it under control and just needed to avoid making a mistake to get the result and make it three different winners in four races.

This is what we wanted. Gone are the days of turning off before the race has even started because you know the winner.

Hopefully, things will stay the same throughout the season, but with a bunch of upgrades coming for the Spanish GP in Barcelona later this month, things could change and a new order stabilise.