How Mercedes exposes the scale of Renault’s challenge

Mercedes was first to hit the track in pre-season testing at Jerez at the start of the V6 turbo hybrid Formula 1 era in 2014; it has remained one step ahead since.

Pre-season testing suggests that a fifth consecutive drivers' and constructors' championship double, one that would elevate it to the same statistical dominance as the Ferrari supremacy of 2000-04, is eminently achievable.

Excellence breeds contempt, in sport at least, because it's so easy to take for granted. It shouldn't be that way given how difficult it is to stay on top, especially through the major aerodynamic rule changes of 2017. But a glance at another team holds up a mirror to Mercedes that reflects the astonishing level it has reached: Renault.

That's not to deride Renault - far from it. Since it acquired what was called Lotus (previously named Renault, known as Benetton before that, and which started as Toleman in 1981) it has been strategically building towards the front. This is season three of the five-year plan to turn itself into a championship contender, and the size of the mountain it's climbing is testament to Mercedes' excellence.

Hysteresis is, in basic terms, the lag between an input and its effect. In Formula 1, you most often hear it used technically to in terms of the suspension behaviour, or in terms of the delay between, say, closing the DRS and the airflow reattaching to the wing surface. Renault is making big inputs to Enstone in the form of huge investment, but the effect of that, realistically, won't be felt for some years in terms of contending for championship. Financial hysteresis, you might say.

This underlines why Formula 1 is in an invidious position. It's not only the business model of F1 itself that has become distorted, but the nature of the teams. Most are sustained by shareholder investment, be it from a manufacturer or independent owners. There's only a small cadre of teams doing F1 in what could be called the 'traditional' way, of relying on sponsors and prize money to sustain themselves. Force India and Williams stand out.

A modern team is an edifice that must be painstakingly constructed. You can't just sign people up and throw them into your factory

Renault is reliant on investment from its owner. By the end of this season its Enstone base is set to expand to contain around 700 staff. That's an increase of about 13% from the same point last year and represents an annual investment of several million pounds in salaries alone. Even so, that leaves Enstone just over 150 short of what Mercedes had at Brackley at the end of 2017.

There was a time when building up an F1 team could be done relatively quickly and easily. But the size and scale, not to mention the fact that sought-after team personnel can rarely be acquired without great lag in terms of time, means a modern team is an edifice that must be painstakingly constructed. You can't just sign people up and throw them into your factory, for with expansions come complex restructures that must be deployed strategically and at a controlled rate.

And it's not a straight line from rock bottom, where Enstone was at the end of the Genii Capital era, to the top. This year the team must prove it is making progress towards the front of the field to justify Renault continuing to pour in the support to make it possible to get to the level of Mercedes.

"We've got a couple of years of hard work ahead before we can start to think that we are close to where we want to be," says Renault Sport F1 chief technical officer Bob Bell.

"Our team is being managed from the very top in a very sensible way. One way to look at it is we were sixth in the championship last year and we need to get into the position to comfortably maintain fourth place in the future.

"Until we can do that, and demonstrate in particular to Renault that we're capable of doing that, they are not going to start writing cheques for a lot more people or resources. We have to prove ourselves every step of the way.

"Once we've done that, we can start the discussion of what it's going to take to move into the top three to take on Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull because they are in another league again in terms of resources. But Renault are prepared for that.

"We will expand to a point where we believe is sensible to consistently fight just outside the top three."

That's a huge undertaking. And this is just talking about the chassis headquarters at Enstone. Renault's Viry-Chatillon base on the outskirts of Paris is the other half of the equation. That needs to get to the level of Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth - and for all its past successes there have been problems there throughout the V6 turbo hybrid era.

The scale of investment required in those two campuses is enormous, and it must be validated by achievements on track. Mercedes did not get to the top by chance, or in one massive bound. Its path to glory started in late 2009 with the acquisition of the Brawn team, and the earliest single-cylinder experiment on smaller capacity turbo racing engines is understood to have started in 2010.

Bell knows exactly what Mercedes did to get there, which included persuading the board to up its investment dramatically once it became clear F1's resource restriction agreement wasn't fit for purpose, because he worked there (pictured below in 2013). So he knows what Renault needs to do.

With new regulations coming for 2021, that seems the most credible point for Renault to step up and be able to fight for titles. But even that is a long way off and much could change. Discussions for cost containment are ongoing, and Renault will be hoping that the investment level required for F1 teams to succeed will come towards its own position - but that's the case with most of the field. F1's cost-control initiatives have had a chequered past, but largely they have failed or - at best - only stemmed the tide.

On track, Renault looks promising. The car is decent, but it could be behind natural enemy McLaren-Renault on pace. That's still enough for it to be in the mix for fourth in the constructors', and at least the fifth place that would represent a step forward from last year. But it's a congested part of the field and failure this year could further delay its rise.

Enstone itself is a factory transformed from the point at which it bottomed out between its last period of winning races in 2012-13 and Renault's acquisition of the team in December '15. It still requires more investment to elevate it to the level of Mercedes.

But there are signs that the old qualities of the team - in particular the aerodynamic design effectiveness that prevailed when Kimi Raikkonen was winning the odd race under the technical directorship of James Allison (now at Mercedes via Ferrari) and aero chief Dirk de Beer (now at Williams via Ferrari) - still course through its blood.

The Renault RS18 doesn't look revolutionary compared with its predecessor, but under the skin significant work has been done. And on the evidence of initiatives such as the blown rear wing (something that offers a marginal gain compared with the pomp of exhaust-blown aero thanks to the gasflow-sapping turbo and the mandated size and position of the pipe exit) and the revised front wing introduced during the second test, it's clear Renault has upped its game.

On the engine side, there are still problems at Viry. The MGU-K, developed in-house, which was originally supposed to be used last season, remains unreliable and stuck on the test bench. Although Renault says it is now part of a more comprehensive ERS upgrade, the timeline for its introduction is vague. Realistically it might not be before June - and it could be much later than that. How much progress has Brixworth made while Viry has grappled with that?

Schumacher chose to leave because he realised, correctly, Enstone didn't have the resources to sustain its success

The bottom line is that it's not much fun playing catch-up. Mercedes could afford to take an evolutionary approach to its 2018 car, optimising every part of it. Look at the car from above and you can see just how slim the sidepods have become - and imagine how different the detail work under the skin will be if the same philosophy is applied. Renault, meanwhile, needs to take major strides just to close on to the back of the top three.

But if any team can do that, it's Enstone. It's a team that has rarely had a sustained level of success, yet has emerged as a race-winning force on multiple occasions. After transforming from Toleman to Benetton in 1985, it won its first race in '86, picking off the odd win in the following years before winning back-to-back titles with Michael Schumacher in 1994 and '95.

But what then happened sums up why the team has found it so hard to stay at the top of the tree as consistently as, say, a Ferrari (or, in the past, McLaren). Schumacher chose to leave because he realised, correctly, Enstone didn't have the resources to sustain its success. So off he went to Ferrari, along with several of the key players in Benetton's success.

Enstone faded dramatically, bottoming out at seventh in the constructors' championship before Renault's takeover and investment carried it back to the front. Then Fernando Alonso led the team to back-to-back drivers' and constructors' titles before he departed for McLaren. F1's giants Ferrari and McLaren then reasserted themselves and Renault struggled after an enforced switch to Bridgestone tyres revealed hitherto undetected windtunnel-to-track correlation problems.

After coming perilously close to vanishing altogether amid the fallout of the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix crash controversy that was revealed in '09, it had a mini-revival under Genii Capital leadership before fading again.

Enstone has been a yo-yo team, but one that always seems to preserve the qualities that made it a title-winning force no matter how many people leave. What a history it has had, perhaps embodied best in the gritty and focused presence of track operations director Alan Permane - whose time with the team dates back to 1989.

Again things seem to be coming to it, but the reality is Renault remains a long way off. Even with high-quality leadership at Enstone and a strong body of employees, to close the gap on Mercedes will require enormous and sustained effort.

After all, the law of diminishing returns is against Renault. Early in the rise, it's possible to take chunks of time out of Mercedes, but every tenth as you get closer becomes exponentially harder to find. That's the nature of modern F1.

It is testament to Mercedes that it's in such a strong position - nobody can or should attempt to take that away from anyone involved. It is a legendary period of success, whatever happens this year, and Mercedes is simply playing the game that's in front of it.

But it's also a testament to how far F1 has drifted from where it once was. And fixing it isn't going to be easy. After all, you can't just wave a magic wand and make things dramatically cheaper - doubly so given the implications of putting a four-figure number of people out of work with such a sudden change.

All we can do is hope that Enstone does indeed rise again. It retains some of the magic that has made it something of an F1 giantkiller in the past, so odds are it will do. But this time, to slay F1's giant, it has to become a Goliath in its own right.