The magic bullet Mercedes might have found

The 2019 French Grand Prix is not one that will go down in the history books as a great race. Between the first half-lap and the final half-lap it was, to say the least, a bit of a non-event on a track that's about as interesting as driving across the Sahara Desert.

Mercedes locked out the front row for the sixth time this season and made it half-a-dozen one-two finishes. And I'm beginning to think that run of success owes something to a new tool it's given its drivers.

There was lots of talk during the Paul Ricard weekend about how Ferrari had discovered that its correlation between windtunnel/CFD and the track was not as expected. Team principal Mattia Binotto denied this - of course he would - but to have confidence in its development direction, any such problem would need to be addressed.

Developments will be relatively steady-state and producing an aero map of the car will come from those numbers. It's the dynamic and transient aerodynamic characteristics that will make or break any car's performance.

It is in these conditions that the driver gets confidence - what the car feels like under braking, what they feel when they initially turn the steering wheel and what happens when they first apply the power. These are the signals the driver reacts to.

It will never be perfect, but it needs to be understood, and the critical areas need to be identified. Anything that runs near the ground will be suspect - so front wing, front wing endplates, bargeboards, the underfloor leading edge, sidepod leading edge, sides of floor and diffuser are all suspect and could, and probably do, work differently on the track compared to the windtunnel.

That list doesn't leave many of the downforce-producing devices unaffected by proximity to the track. In reality, it's just the rear wing that isn't. With that, as long as you have a leading-edge flow direction as it comes off the engine cover and sidepods, you can do 99% of your research with CFD and pretty much guarantee it will work as the data suggests.

The one thing that might influence it is diffuser stall, which might be slow to reattach at the end of the straight - especially if the DRS is closing at the same time. In 2018, Williams introduced a new rear wing at Silverstone that suffered exactly this problem.

Ferrari introduced a new front wing endplate in France, which had a small cutout on the top rear corner and a small vane on the top of the footplate to create more outwash. The outboard area of the Ferrari front wing versus the Mercedes is the most visually different, and the rest of the teams are split over their approaches to some degree - and some are sort of mid-way between the Ferrari and Mercedes approaches.

When the cars were first released, I questioned how a team could generate the front downforce that was required if it didn't have a wing section in that area. I also said that I liked the Ferrari version, but that was more a visual thing as it was at least a bit different. I still stick with my earlier question regarding how to create the downforce without a wing section there.

Now that the season has settled down, and unfortunately Mercedes has once again shown all the others how it should be done, I think there is a bit more to it than just creating a wing section in that area.

Everyone says there is no magic bullet to improving the performance of an F1 car but I think Mercedes found one after pre-season testing

One of the Mercedes traits this year is that it is very good in slow corners. Yes, the aerodynamic loads in a slow corner are much less than in a fast corner but they are still there, and the car will go faster around any corner if it has more aerodynamic forces working on it compared to another car. But it's critical that it is working in the correct way.

You spend a much higher percentage of the lap time in slow corners than you do in fast corners, so there is a lot more time to gain with a car that is faster in these type of corners.

As a corner gets slower it requires more steering lock and that is the area I believe Mercedes benefits from - in that it uses this increased steering lock to move the centre of pressure forward. This gives the car more front grip in low speed corners. Not only that, but if the car has a little understeer in slow speed corners then when you apply that little bit of extra lock it reduces the understeer.

Ferrari, on the other hand, has the opposite. Its car is very benign to variations in steering lock so in reality it keeps a better balance through the varying speed range of the corners on a typical track. But not producing high enough levels of downforce from its front wing means that the driver is a passenger to the grip levels and balance of the car.

If they apply more steering lock, nothing changes and the understeer probably just increases. If they put on more front wing to improve the front end grip in slow corners then they also have it in the fast corners and the driver will always want the car to be neutral or have a touch of understeer in fast corners. So basically, the car is, in reality, consistently aerodynamically balanced.

With Mercedes generating downforce from its front wing outer section, when it induces steering lock those big front tyres open a section of the front wing and it also opens and allows the endplates to create a little more outwash. This makes the outer section of the front wing work harder. More lock means more of that section works better and so with increased steering lock the drivers get more front grip - reducing understeer.

This can also help get the front tyres into their working window. These tyres don't like sliding as it overheats the surface. So, Ferrari, by not having that section of front wing, doesn't get any change and the tyre just slides.

I'm pretty sure that this is why Mercedes made such a big switch in its performance after pre-season testing. Initially, it ran with what could be called an inwash front wing endplate that basically gave the drivers a more consistently balanced car. But at testing its car was not great in the slow corners and you could actually see the understeer.

Now the Mercedes is normally a rocketship in slow corners even to the extent of the rear looking nervous as it rotates around the front axle. The drivers can cope with that because if they have to correct the rear by reducing the steering lock they lose front grip. Also, coming off the corner when they are reducing the steering lock, the balance is moving rearward and giving them better rear grip and traction.

Everyone says there is no magic bullet to improving the performance of an F1 car but I think Mercedes found one after pre-season testing by using steering lock in the box of tools that you give the driver to get the best out of the car. That is why even the team was surprised with its own performance in Melbourne.

Ferrari is, to some extent, in the doldrums at the moment. Yes, it could have, should have, and might have won two or maybe three races, but we are now eight races into the season and it needs to improve the performance of the car very quickly.

But Ferrari also needs to look back at 2014 and how Sebastian Vettel handled being teamed up against new boy Daniel Riccardo at Red Bull. The average back-to-back performance record for the season was the following:

Average Qualifying Position, Average Race Finish

Vettel 7th Ricciardo 5th, Vettel 5th Ricciardo 3.7

Taking away the worst qualifying and race result - as they probably came from an outside influence - produces this:

Average Qualifying Position, Average Race Finish

Vettel 6.5 Ricciardo 4.7, Vettel 4.9 Ricciardo 3.25

This was the year when exhaust blowing was eliminated. Vettel had been a master of this. He could drive the car with a little oversteer to get it to rotate knowing that when he got back on the throttle the rear would grip, and the exit balance and traction would be perfect. Now, with the Ferrari, he doesn't have that front end to get the car to rotate and when he applies more steering lock the car just understeers more.

His record against Charles Leclerc is not so bad but, like Ricciardo, if you give Leclerc the tools he will just get on with it and I think this is making Vettel spend a little too much time looking over his shoulder, just in case a repeat of 2014 is on the cards.

Let's hope Ferrari can take the fight to Mercedes soon. But if it can't, that's certainly not the fault of Mercedes.

In France, Hamilton finished 18 seconds ahead of Valtteri Bottas, who out of the blue had Charles Leclerc breathing down his neck on the last lap. This was probably because Bottas struggled to get his tyres working after the virtual safety car interlude for a marker bollard that Alex Albon sent rolling down the track.

Actually that bollard was probably the most exciting moment of the race.

Up to sixth-placed Carlos Sainz Jr, who was 1m35s behind Hamilton, everyone else was lapped. But, credit where credit is due, McLaren has really stepped up its game this year. Qualifying fifth and sixth proves it is on the right track with personnel and development direction, and it's a shame Lando Norris lost seventh place and slipped to ninth. But McLaren is now improving and letting results do the talking.

It's not anyone at Mercedes' fault that there's no competition

But the gaps in Formula 1 are simply too big. So can the powers that be please look at this race and come up with some suggestions that might take us back to the kind of racing we saw in France in 1979 when Gilles Villeneuve in the Ferrari and Rene Arnoux in his Renault were wheel-to-wheel corner after corner? And while they are at it, listen to Hamilton's warnings that the 2021 regulations need some big changes if they are to work.

Mercedes deserves the success it is having. The team has done a better job by a country mile in all departments compared to everyone else, so it's not anyone at Brackley or Brixworth's fault that there's no competition. But it's time for all the teams to realise F1 is bigger than any individual operation and group together with the FIA and F1 to make the changes that will keep the viewers - and even the lifelong enthusiasts and competitors like myself - interested. Otherwise numbers will keep declining. A race like this is not racing.

Last weekend again showed the problems of the penalty regulations. The build-up television coverage was all about the Hamilton/Vettel incident and time penalty in Canada, but the problem is bigger than that one controversy and the wider penalty situation is downright confusing.

Take Daniil Kvyat for example. He had to start 19th for replacing several engine bits, and add to this George Russell, who had to go back a few positions effectively because he ran over an unfixed man hole cover in Baku and destroyed parts through no fault of his own. Why should they suffer?

For these type of penalties, F1 should instead take away a percentage of a team's constructors' championship points. For a full power unit replacement, 10% would be enough to get everyone's attention - and do the same for a gearbox.

With today's cars, the driver is a passenger of any component glitches. They come from the manufacturer or team side of things, so cut them out of the sporting penalties. This percentage method would also help a team that for some reason hasn't scored any points and it would still hit the big teams pretty hard. It would be invisible to the viewer and allow each race to be as competitive as possible without anyone enduring grid penalties.

As for the Hamilton/Vettel situation, in general these penalties all need to be chucked out of the window and that includes the driver penalties for impeding.

To me, every weekend should start with a clean sheet, something like a radio warning and a special FIA startline pit board warning for a first offence, a yellow pit board warning for the second, a red pit board warning for the third and then a point on a licence, another point for a fourth offence and so on. This should be for all on track driver offences, joining the track unsafely, track limits, impeding, yellow flag infringements etc.

This way the racing would be what is happening and warnings or penalties would be visual and audible to the viewers and spectators around the track. Then they might just have a clue what is happening.

All of the penalties are typical of what is taking away from good racing by good drivers. Allow them to get on with their jobs on the day. What happened in Canada, for whatever reason, destroyed one of the best races of this season.

That's why this sort of thing needs to be eradicated and it can be done overnight with the teams' unanimous agreement. The FIA just needs to get on with it. The major changes that are required to level the playing field can't take place in an instant, but a change that will at least allow the drivers to race hard is immediately achievable.