The F1 hero to zero dividing line that has never been so thin

From the outside it’s quite hard to comprehend just how brutal Formula 1 is right now for everyone other than Red Bull, and how thin that dividing line is between hero and zero. Sure, Red Bull continues to make things look easy, with its RB20 and Max Verstappen unleashing a masterclass of dominance week in and week out that simply has to be admired.

But behind it, in the two clear groups that have emerged, there is everything to play for in a fight that has no clear pecking order and is impossible to predict. The teams in both Pack A (Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes) and Pack B (RB, Haas, Wiliams, Sauber and Alpine), are in a world where details make all the difference.

This is not a fight where there are half-second gaps that mean drivers have the luxury of a bad set-up, or a missed apex in qualifying, or being on the wrong drag and downforce level. Success and failure is defined by a single tenth, even half that at times. It's hard to comprehend just how hard it is for teams to work out and extract where the difference is made.

After all, we are talking about ridiculously small margins here. Lewis Hamilton missed out on a spot in Q2 in China last weekend by 0.068 seconds – which is 0.00071%.

Up and down the grid at each race, we are seeing similar tiny margins be all that is making the difference between being in a good spot or seeing your weekend going to pot. Rewind to Japan and that fight for the front row of Pack B. Yuki Tsunoda got through to Q3 by being 0.055 seconds quicker than his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo in Q2, while main rival Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas was just 0.022 seconds further down the road.

It takes longer to read a single word than it does to time gaps like that, all after cars have done more than five kilometres of running flat out. That’s quite incredible when you think about it.

The gaps in the two packs behind Red Bull are getting smaller and smaller

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Such tiny margins are the same in the races too. Much is made and debated about the performance swings between Ferrari and McLaren this season – as at each race one of them seems to have the edge over the other.

PLUS: Why Verstappen's China F1 win was a sideshow to the real battle

In China last weekend, Ferrari found itself having to explain why Charles Leclerc was 10 seconds adrift of Lando Norris at the chequered flag, while in the previous GP in Japan, Carlos Sainz had finished 8.8 seconds of the Briton. The gap between Ferrari and McLaren in Australia, where Sainz led home a Maranello 1-2, was 5.904 seconds.

While the impact of safety cars does not make this a perfect analysis, if you divide the final gaps between the number of laps the figures are astonishing. Between Ferrari and McLaren it was 0.17 seconds per lap in China, 0.16 seconds in Japan, and 0.1 seconds in Australia.

"Small things make a big difference to the overall result. We're in a battle of fine margins right now and we've been on the wrong end of that for the past few race weekends"
George Russell

Throw into the mix too that a missing tenth on a Saturday can have massive consequences for the race. If suddenly you are not qualifying on the second row, then you can find yourself dumped back to the bottom end of Q3.

In the race, it means you are consigned to dirty air – which makes overtaking harder, forces you to push harder to the detriment on tyres, and then because you are sliding more, the tyres increasingly overheat. As Frederic Vasseur put it: “Even if you are faster, you damage the tyre for the first 10 laps and then you are dead.”

Nothing perhaps proved this situation more than China last weekend. Hamilton looked comfortably in control of things in the sprint after qualifying up front, and had the legs on everyone other than Verstappen because he was able to control his own pace in clear air while those behind lost time battling. Then on Sunday he found it tough to make progress through the pack once he found himself needing to charge from the rear.

This tight situation is even more intense for Pack B, who have faced a reality since the start of the season that they are pretty much scrapping over a single point at each race. Haas boss Ayao Komatsu famously said at the season-opening Bahrain GP: “Whoever beats [Lance] Stroll - if nobody retires - is going to get one point. There's no margin for error.”

Haas and RB appear at the front of the Pack B - but they know a perfect weekend is needed to score points

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

At the moment, it appears that RB and Haas are the leading contenders in this pack, but there is virtually no difference between them. RB team boss Laurent Mekies feels that it is impossible to separate teams right now, even if one of them appears to be showing an edge.

“There is nothing guaranteed in this group, and only if you nail the weekend, you get to that P10,” he said. “As soon as any element, be it tyre management, strategy, or anything, falls off the cliff, you will give up that point.”

It goes back to George Russell’s summary in China that Mercedes’ season is being made to look so much worse simply because it is regularly falling the wrong side in such a tight contest.

“Small things make a big difference to the overall result,” said the Briton. “We're in a battle of fine margins right now and we've been on the wrong end of that for the past few race weekends.”

What the situation is doing is prompting a new level of deep diving for teams to ensure that everything is nailed, and that at no point can anything be left on the table. Expect more detailed upgrades (RB tweaked its headrest in China), more focus on marginal gains and a battle that is only going to get more and more intense.

It is quite remarkable that so much of the big picture of performance levels can be changed by such tiny improvements. As Mercedes technical director James Allison admitted this week: “Around the part of the battle we're fighting, a few hundredths can make a difference sometimes and a couple of tenths would make all the difference in the world.”

Who will come out on top in Miami?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images