Gary Anderson's verdict on F1 2016

With the 2016 season slowly disappearing in the rear-view mirror, the time is right to look back at each of the 11 Formula 1 teams' performances over the season - but not in the normal way.

They are ranked in 'supertime' performance order, with the figure calculated by taking each car's fastest single lap of a grand prix weekend as a percentage of the best outright lap, and then averaging it out over a season, to rank by car pace rather than simple championship order.

1 MERCEDES
Supertime: 100.011% (2015: 100.072%)

Mercedes completed the total domination of this era of regulations with its most impressive season in terms of results, winning 19 out of 21 races and never being beaten to victory on pure pace. That's hugely impressive, even though you could say that other teams dropped the ball in terms of development.

Usually, you would expect things to close up as a rules package matures. But looking at our 'supertime' figures, Mercedes has not really been caught since the first year of the 1.6-litre V6 turbo era in 2014.

Then, it had a 0.881% advantage over the next-fastest team, which was Williams. Last year, the gap closed to 0.703% with Ferrari moving up to second, but this year the advantage was back up to 0.842%, this time over Red Bull. That's hardly a transformation.

The car clearly works very well in a wide range of conditions. It's strong over the kerbs and has a very stable chassis, which is partly down to the fully hydraulic front end. The heave damper (a lateral damper in the front suspension) is used to control the ride height, with a similar system at the rear. Its rivals use spring-assisted third dampers.

But there is no magic bullet - this level of performance is generated by the whole car. Mercedes also has a very strong aerodynamic package that works well at all circuits, harnessed to the best power unit on the grid.

2 RED BULL
Supertime: 100.853% (2015: 101.521%)

The 2015 season was a terrible one for Red Bull, as poor results and a deteriorating relationship with Renault led to public ructions between the partners. But Red Bull got its act together this year, and this has led to an improvement in the chassis on top of the gains made by the Renault (or, as we're supposed to call it, the TAG Heuer) hybrid engine.

But you have to ask who else with a Renault power unit has achieved respectable results? There isn't anyone. Red Bull is still facing a power shortfall, since the Ferrari package is clearly ahead in this area.

This isn't just a problem in terms of pure engine performance - it also has knock-on effects. In order to minimise the deficiency in top speed you have to trim your downforce levels away from your ideal, so that compounds the disadvantage. And next year that could be an even bigger problem because there's going to be increased downforce and therefore more drag.

Overall, Red Bull did a good job with two wins and 16 podiums, and it remains best placed to overhaul Mercedes next year.

3 FERRARI
Supertime: 100.877% (2015: 100.775%)

Heading into the season, Ferrari was the team Mercedes had to fear. It won three races in 2015, made a big step forward and should have been ready to snap at the heels of the champion team on a regular basis. But it wasn't. All we saw were occasional glimpses of performance, but not enough to win a race, and an awful lot of talk.

The car seemed to struggle in higher ambient temperatures. It's not clear why, but the first place I would look is the diffuser because the way it produces its downforce will change with temperature. If you have a more sensitive aerodynamic package, you have a problem.

When it gets hotter, you can suffer diffuser-stall at a higher rideheight, so it's possible Ferrari's diffuser is too critical to work in a wide range of temperatures. That means you have to set the overall rideheight higher, so you don't get down to the point at which it stalls when the rear is pushed down by higher aerodynamic load.

But the fundamental problem seems to be that there is nobody who is willing and able to take the team by the scruff of the neck, so it's like the 'old' Ferrari that underachieved before Jean Todt came in and built it up towards the Michael Schumacher era of dominance.

Ferrari also lost technical director James Allison this season, which is a setback. There's a lot of pressure from the top at Ferrari, so do those running the company think they know more about how to win in F1 than Allison?

Ferrari has gone backwards this year. Big changes should already have happened if it's to make the most of next year's proverbial clean sheet of paper. With higher grip levels, and shorter braking distances because of the increased tyre grip, it's going to put a major strain on the brakes as well as further demands on the aero. Is Ferrari equipped to get on top of all of that?

Sebastian Vettel's performance level was erratic, and even though Kimi Raikkonen surprised with the consistency of his performances in the second half of the season, there are also question marks there.

4 WILLIAMS
Supertime: 101.709% (2015: 101.544%)

This team has been on the slide since it jumped up to third in the constructors' championship in 2014. The key problem seems to be that some of the upgrades didn't deliver the anticipated improvement.

The concern is whether the team truly understands the reasons. It seems the front wing, which affects the performance of the entire car aerodynamically, is the area where things were not quite right, even though details like the nose (shortened by 50mm) introduced in Russia, show some good, sound engineering.

But it's a team that doesn't have the same resources as Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari, so hanging on to third place in the constructors' championship was always going to be tough. The fact that it was also outscored by Force India will hurt, so a strong start next year is essential.

5 FORCE INDIA
Supertime: 101.719% (2015: 101.967%)

When you consider the available resources, you'd have to say that Force India is the team of the year. It's taken a long time and a lot of hard work to get there, but fourth in the championship is a fantastic reward.

Going beyond that will require one of the top three to drop the ball in quite a big way, and it will also need serious investment. Force India's strength has been its efficiency - an ability to get the most out of everything it does. But to make that next step it's going to need more money to spend on development.

Once its major upgrade package was introduced for the Spanish Grand Prix in May, Force India performed strongly and was able to turn a 51-point deficit to Williams following that race into a 35-point advantage by the end of the year.

6 TORO ROSSO
Supertime: 102.200% (2015: 101.918%)

Toro Rosso had a difficult end to the season. But while that was always going to happen given it was running the 2015 Ferrari power unit, it did make some trouble for itself by seemingly having accepted that it was going to be tough.

Look at the problem with parts of the car fouling the tyres in Abu Dhabi, for example. How can you have that and not understand why? That's a concern in terms of what it says about the team.

But on the plus side, Toro Rosso produced a car that was strong aerodynamically. Technical director James Key is someone I rate highly because he's got a very clear idea of what a team needs to do to reach its targets.

Next year it goes back to the Renault engine, which will at least be up to date. If it can produce the kind of chassis package that it did for this year, it could go well.

7 McLAREN
Supertime: 102.217% (2015: 103.026%)

McLaren is hard to understand. Fernando Alonso drove the wheels off the car and delivered some good results, while Jenson Button often struggled to get it working the way he wanted. But, overall, while McLaren improved, it's still a long way off.

The 'blame' for the performance probably goes 75% to Honda and 25% to McLaren. But remember, by setting such aggressive packaging targets in 2015, McLaren put Honda in a position where it struggled to find its feet.

On top of that, while the chassis was strong on certain circuits, it doesn't appear to have the kind of operating window a good, all-round car needs.

McLaren-Honda is going in the right direction, but not as quickly as it should and there is still a very long way to go.

8 HAAS
Supertime: 102.594% (2015: N/A)

For a first-year team, Haas did a very good job. It's been a long time since we've seen a new outfit get anything like these kinds of results, and it made the most of the support it got from Ferrari to establish itself as a proper team straight away.

There are clearly many areas where more learning is required. I don't understand how it can have had so many brake-system problems without something serious being wrong, and performance was not as consistent as you would like, but perhaps those things are to be expected.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next year. The first season can, in some ways, be easier than the second, so that will be the true test. The team claims to have focused on the 2017 car this season, so let's see how that actually plays out.

9 RENAULT
Supertime: 103.238% (2015: 101.953%)

It's hard to evaluate Renault's season. Given the late start - thanks to the French manufacturer's delayed takeover of the Lotus team, and the need to alter the car to take a different engine - this was always going to be a difficult year. The focus was bound to be on hitting the ground running in 2017.

So the only way we can tell whether Renault has done a good job is by seeing where it is in the early races next year. The underdeveloped RS16 clearly wasn't a good car. It wasn't the slowest, but it was hard to drive and poor over bumps.

This year was a write-off; there are good people at Enstone, so hopefully there will be a step forward next year.

10 SAUBER
Supertime: 103.517% (2015: 102.604%)

Sauber's year was compromised by its financial problems, until the arrival of new owners turned on the development taps again. But the fact is it still had to rely on the fortuitous circumstances of a wet race in Brazil, with Felipe Nasr driving very well to ninth place, to beat Manor in the points.

It's difficult to know how tough it was inside the team, but there never seemed to be an acceptance of where the car was and on just getting the maximum out of it. Sauber should have been able to battle Renault, but it didn't manage it.

Hopefully, the stresses have been eliminated by the buyout, but I have to question the ambition of the team given that it's running a year-old Ferrari power unit spec next year.

The claim is this allows it to focus its limited resource on aero work, but I don't understand that move. Toro Rosso's struggles in the second half of this year should offer a worrying preview of Sauber's fate, even if it does manage to produce a good car for 2017.

11 MANOR
Supertime: 103.779% (2015: 106.459%)

The car seemed to be a good, solid package and worked well for the drivers, even if it didn't have the ultimate performance thanks to a lack of downforce. Considering where the team was last year, this was a good step and allowed it to be a genuine rear-of-the-midfield contender for the first time.

That Manor missed out on 10th place in the constructors' championship is unfortunate, and will surely have a financial impact on the team next season. That's a shame, as Dave Ryan, who came in as team principal, has got it working well.

With talk of new investors, the future again seems uncertain. Hopefully, whatever happens, Manor can build on the progress it showed in 2016.

THE WINNERS AND LOSERS

The supertimes can also be used to work out which teams have gained or lost compared to the 2015 season.

IMPROVED

Manor 2.680%
Red Bull 0.668%
McLaren 0.432%
Force India 0.248%
Mercedes 0.061%

LOST GROUND

Ferrari +0.102%
Williams +0.165%
Toro Rosso +0.282%
Sauber +0.913%
Renault +1.285%