How Mercedes exposes Ferrari’s true inadequacy

The unstoppable freight train that is Mercedes running at speed, and with Lewis Hamilton driving like never before, means the drivers' and constructors' championship trophies will have a prominent place reserved for them in the trophy cabinet in Brackley.

Since the summer break Hamilton appears to have matured and his confidence in himself and his consistency is undeniable. Love him or hate him, you have to respect him, and I genuinely believe that he has joined the all-time greats of the sport.

His qualifying laps are always mega and at Suzuka in Q2 his 1m27.819s and in Q3 his laps of 1m27.346s and 1m27.319s were exceptional even by his own high standards. We try to pick holes in Mercedes when it doesn't have a good weekend, but in reality its bad weekends usually only mean it doesn't win.

Since the beginning of this year, when Valtteri Bottas joined in place of the retired Nico Rosberg, there has been no evidence of intra-team rivalry - so is that because Bottas is not fast enough, or is it that Lewis is now the longstanding driver at the team and it therefore responds better to his requirements? We will have to wait on that one to see if and when Bottas gets himself up to speed and becomes more of a threat to Hamilton on a regular basis.

Mercedes keeps its head together better than any other team in the pitlane. That definitely has contributed to what is now more or less certain to be four consecutive double world championships.

Yes, the 2017 car is always on a bit of a knife-edge set-up wise, but when it has problems or doesn't perform as it should, the team comes together and hits back stronger than before. Whether a chassis or a power unit problem, the depth in all areas gives Mercedes the strength and direction to recover quickly. Even when things go wrong, it rarely turns to disaster now.

On the other side of that coin we have Ferrari. It started the season very strongly, but the 'grande casino' that has been Ferrari for so many years returned. At a time when everyone at Ferrari needs to keep their heads, it becomes a team that can't do right for doing wrong.

Crashes and power unit problems have taken a car that has had the potential to score major points over the past three races into a bit-part player. In terms of contending for the drivers' championship, the team has looked like a bunch of amateurs.

This performance over the last three races from both the drivers and Ferrari is not that of a championship-winning team

Some would say luck plays a big part in success, but I don't subscribe to that. In this game, you make your own luck by eliminating as many of the potential problems as you can. When everything is going well, it's easy, but when the chips are down you see the real strength of a team. I'm not seeing that strength at Ferrari at the moment, but I am seeing it at Mercedes.

The main issue is the reliability problems are not focused on one individual area, which just compounds the trouble. At Sepang, it was something between the turbo and plenum chamber that caused the problem and led to Vettel starting from the back of the grid and Kimi Raikkonen not starting at all.

But at Suzuka, Vettel was starting second and potentially had the car to challenge for victory when another engine issue arose. He was a sitting duck for the few laps he completed, and retired early on.

The word is that it was a spark plug problem, and only Ferrari knows if this was true. But was it a one-off or a potential ongoing problem? Ferrari can't just let it go and hope all will be well if the plugs are changed regularly. The supplier will have to rigorously scrutinise its quality procedures between now and Austin to come up with at least an understanding of what went wrong and how to prevent a repeat of it.

Apparently, Mercedes also had a spark plug problem between qualifying and the race but managed to identify it when there was time to correct it. Now, these spark plugs are not like the one in your Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine; as with any part of an F1 car, they are very sophisticated pieces of kit buried deep in the engine.

So you have to ask if Mercedes has better monitoring protocols in place that detect potential problems earlier? It wouldn't surprise me, because Mercedes seems to do everything else that little bit better - so why not that as well?

The old saying 'to finish first, first you must finish' always applies, and the more data you have, the greater the chance of identifying a problem like this before it catches you.

This performance over the past three races from both the drivers and Ferrari is not that of a championship-winning team. Now Hamilton has a 59-point lead over Vettel with only 100 points up for grabs, I'm afraid the writing is on the wall.

It would be pretty interesting to have been a fly on the wall in Maranello on Monday morning. Sergio Marchionne has had his say in the press already, saying Ferrari has paid the price for 'ignoring' quality control...

Moving on from all of that, Red Bull has really got the hammer down. Again, it's just a pity that it started the season so poorly, otherwise it would have been right in the title fight rather than just challenging for the odd race win.

Great as it is to see Red Bull back at the front now, the danger is that will make it even harder for Ferrari to fight back against Mercedes. With the right set-up, Red Bull could challenge for victory, or at worst podiums, at any of the last four tracks.

My only concern is that Red Bull was back-to-backing different levels of downforce and hence drag. It even ran different levels of downforce in qualifying and race. This must show that the simulation and track performance doesn't quite correlate.

Great as it is to see Red Bull back at the front now, the danger is that will make it even harder for Ferrari to fight back against Mercedes

Normally, a team will have done hundreds of simulation runs with different levels of downforce, and when it comes to the circuit it should have a pretty reasonable confidence level in the set-up. You might take away or add a little downforce for conditions, but having to explore the levels is going back a few years to when you used to stick your finger up in the air to confirm which way the wind was blowing.

In the races where Red Bull has performed exceptionally well, it has run visibly less downforce than the other frontrunning cars. So I think all this shows that it is not totally confident in what the best aerodynamic compromise is.

I would also like to add that the addition of Nico Rosberg to the Sky Sports F1 punditry was very positive. Since his insight into what a team and driver goes through before and leading up to a race is very current, I'm pretty sure most people would go away with a better understanding of what it takes to succeed.

So now it's onwards and upwards to Austin and the Circuit of The Americas. It again is a fast, flowing circuit, so should suit Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull.

Hopefully, even though the championship is more or less done, we will get a good race with all six of those cars in battle.

That is, if Ferrari doesn't slip up on another of its banana skins.