The evidence that threatens Ferrari’s resurgence

It is often said that the Formula 1 field closes up in the second season after a major rule change.

The theory is that bigger teams with more resources are able to exploit new regulations more than others, spreading out the field initially. The law of diminishing returns then allows the smaller squads to close up in subsequent seasons.

That should bode well for 2018, given how close Ferrari got to Mercedes last season, but is it actually true? Autosport decided to look at the second years of major regulations in F1 history to find an answer.

Part of the analysis makes use of supertimes for each F1 season. Supertimes are based on the fastest single lap by each car at each race weekend, expressed as a percentage of the fastest single lap overall (100.000%) and averaged over the season.

The fight at the front

The table below shows how the gap between the fastest and second fastest cars changed in the second season of major world championship regulations, compared to the margin the year before.

Gap between the top two teams

The first two years on this list were not really the second seasons of a rules set. The 1.5-litre supercharged/4.5-litre unsupercharged regulations became the first Formula 1 in 1946-47 and were based on pre-war Voiturette rules, while F2 - which briefly gained world championship status for 1952-53 - already existed too.

The closing of the field in those periods is more indicative of new constructor Ferrari's increasingly effective challenge to Alfa Romeo in 1951, and Maserati becoming stronger after a troubled 1952, a season in which lead driver Juan Manuel Fangio missed many races due to injury.

The first genuinely new F1 regulations were therefore the 2.5-litre rules introduced in 1954. For the supertimes analysis, the one-off outing of Lancia's D50 at the Spanish GP is ignored, leaving an advantage of 0.464% for Mercedes over Ferrari.

Lancia appeared more often in 1955, bringing Mercedes' advantage down to just 0.049%. That's a closing up of 0.415%, but there is a big caveat here.

If Lancia - which had produced the rapid D50 during the previous season so couldn't be said to be taking advantage of the second year of the 2.5-litre rules - is discounted, Ferrari and Maserati (the next best) both fell further behind the Silver Arrows. Mercedes' refinement - and the hiring of Stirling Moss alongside Fangio - made it stronger in 1955. It was beaten twice (by Ferrari) in 1954, but only once the following season.

The switch to 1.5-litre engines tells a different story. Ferrari took advantage of the British teams' reluctance to embrace the new rules and dominated the 1961 season. Lotus, BRM and Cooper duly made gains the following year, surpassing Ferrari and closing up themselves, while newcomer Lola was also quicker than the Italian squad.

The story of the three-litre regulations, introduced in 1966, is complicated by the Lotus 49 and its Cosworth DFV engine. The appearance of the 49, one of the most dominant cars in terms of raw pace in F1 history, from round three of 1967 meant the gap from first to second was bigger than it had been the year before.

Once the DFV was made available to other teams for 1968 and Ferrari improved, the gap came down again, but the fact is that it took more than two years for the top teams to really close up under the three-litre regulations. It wasn't until 1969 - year four - that the gap from first to second was smaller than that between Mercedes and Ferrari (0.178%) in 2017.

The next big change was aerodynamic, with the banning of ground-effects and arrival of flat bottoms in 1983. In terms of supertimes, Brabham was much closer to McLaren in 1984 than it had been to pacesetter Ferrari the year before.

History paints a very mixed picture. It is not a certainty that the top two teams will close in the second season of a rules set

However, appalling reliability stopped Brabham challenging and McLaren dominated the championship, winning 12 of the 16 races. Indeed, the season was the first of three consecutive drivers' titles for the McLaren-TAG combination.

Because of the difference between turbo power outputs in qualifying and the race, and the fuel restrictions in place at the time, this is probably the period in F1 history when the raw pace information provided by the supertimes tallies least with actual race results.

There's no such doubt about the next change, the move from turbos to 3.5-litre normally aspirated engines in 1989. McLaren dominated that year, winning 10 of the 16 races and having an impressive 1.445% pace advantage over Ferrari. That fell to six wins and 0.653% in 1990 as Alain Prost moved from McLaren to Ferrari and put in a genuine championship challenge. That second year was clearly more competitive.

The banning of electronic aids such as traction control and active suspension instantly closed up the field in 1994, as the smaller teams had been unable to keep pace with the technological developments being pursued by the frontrunners before the ban. There was thus less scope for things to get closer, and Williams in fact extended its advantage slightly in 1995 after its troubled start to 1994.

Interestingly, despite having the fastest car in both years, Williams failed to win the drivers' championship - both times being beaten by Benetton's Michael Schumacher. This is also a rare example of a rule change providing more of a benefit in terms of competition than the subsequent years of regulation stability.

McLaren stole a march on everyone at the start of the narrow cars/grooved tyre era in 1998, with Ferrari reducing the gap by 0.164% the following year. That probably would have come down even further had lead driver Schumacher not missed six races after breaking his leg at Silverstone.

Although Brawn and Jenson Button won both championships in 2009, following new aero rules and the switch back to slicks, Red Bull actually had the fastest car over the full campaign. Having missed out on the double-diffuser trick at the start of 2009, Red Bull started the following year stronger and extended its overall advantage by 0.32% in 2010.

The move to hybrid engines resulted in a 0.881% pace advantage for Mercedes in 2014, which was reduced by 0.12% the following year, a surprisingly small change given the size of the gap.

This paints a very mixed picture, far less convincing than the initial table suggested. It is clearly not a certainty that the top two teams will close in the second season of a rules set

Context - why a team is faster than another - is just as important, if not more so, as a factor.

The competitive spread

Charting the gap between the fastest and fifth fastest car each season also gives an indication of the health of the field - how many teams outside the first two are capable of challenging? And does the 'second season' help those squads further down the order?

In 2017, Red Bull was - on average - 0.873% slower than Mercedes, but won three races with the third-fastest car. Renault (fourth-fastest) and Force India (fifth) were 2.101% and 2.114% behind respectively and did not score a podium, never mind a victory.

The table below shows how the gap between the fastest and fifth-fastest cars changed in the second season of the major rules eras previously mentioned, compared to the gap the year before.

Gap between the top and fifth teams

The field was slightly closer in 1951 as the pacesetting Alfa Romeo 158/159 showed its age, but it is remarkable that the gap in 1953 grew. Ferrari's advantage over Cooper in 1952 was a massive 7.319%, but it still managed to extend that the following year.

The first-fifth gap was substantially smaller in the second year of the 2.5-litre regulations in 1955. Even including Lancia (excluded in the table) gives a spread 0.486% smaller as fifth-fastest Vanwall moved closer on its path to becoming a true frontrunner.

The 1962 result - that the gap increased - is surprising and masks a more significant change. Ferrari's fall from competitiveness was such that it's deficit to Lotus in 1962 was bigger than its advantage over fifth-placed Porsche the year before!

It's clear that 1961 can be seen as something of an anomaly. The British teams had already started to dominate F1 in 1960, but were unprepared for the 1.5-litre regulations and allowed Ferrari to jump them. They got themselves sorted and Ferrari remained stagnant for 1962, restoring the status quo.

The Lotus 49's pace spread out the field in 1967, mirroring the first-second findings above, before things closed up again in subsequent seasons.

The next four rules sets did experience closer fields during their second seasons, though in the case of 1995 it was by a negligible amount. But, worryingly in terms of looking ahead to 2018, the two most recent changes brought bigger gaps in the second years.

That fact aside, it can be seen that the second year of a rules set is more useful to the midfield runners than the second-fastest team. This makes sense - those with fewer resources are more likely to be further off the pace, or have a key issue, which they can address the following year, particularly once they have seen what the 'top' teams have come up with.

Of course, these are just generalisations. The specific circumstances of any given season are still crucial, as some of the examples above show.

For 2018, the fact that Mercedes produced a difficult car and yet still finished 2017 on top is a worry. Is it really likely to miss the mark further next year?

On the other hand, Red Bull did not have a good start to last season, amid windtunnel issues and Renault not making as much engine progress as hoped. But Red Bull's subsequent development rate was impressive. If it can start this season with a better car, perhaps with a step from Renault too, it could find it rather easier to close the 0.873% 2017 deficit to Mercedes than Ferrari does trying to bridge its 0.178% gap.

With Renault ramping up its challenge and McLaren switching from Honda to Renault power, it seems likely that the top five cars in 2018 will be closer than they were last season. But the fight at the front is less straightforward.

Perhaps the biggest question, which the rule changes can't answer, is whether Ferrari can do what it hasn't managed since 2008: follow up one strong season with another.