Why Mercedes may be wrong to be so cagey on new F1 expectations

This all feels familiar.

Formula 1 heading home from the Spanish Grand Prix with Max Verstappen as the dominant race winner at the championship’s laboratory track. And Mercedes is hopeful it has made tangible progress in closing the performance gap to the front.

“Probably the most interesting thing in Spain was that Mercedes turned a corner,” claimed Autosport magazine, four days on from Verstappen’s triumph ahead of Sergio Perez and George Russell in the 2022 Barcelona contest.

Fast-forward to the 2023 edition just gone and, while Mercedes’ positive performance in Spain has set tongues wagging – “[Mercedes] had a rocket ship – I’m not sure where they found that pace,” said Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll – arguably the most interesting thing about last weekend was how good the racing was. Behind Verstappen, that is…

The close spread of the teams behind Red Bull combined beautifully with the new demands placed on the Pirellis by the restored final two corners of the track to produce an engaging contest. Plus, there were cars starting out of position, racing through the pack, and lower-than-expected temperatures boosting some teams while holding others back.

But now that race is finished, attention turns to those remaining. And the key question of this season as well as the two leading up to the 2026 ruleset: can Red Bull be caught?

After all, when a local rental car attendant tells Autosport upon returning the machine that got us around Barcelona, Valles Oriental and Maresme last weekend that all the home fans had to cheer in the race was Fernando Alonso surviving Esteban Ocon’s rather disgraceful defence, it demonstrates part of F1’s problem.

Red Bull's smallest winning margin of 2023 came courtesy of Mercedes in Spain

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

It may be selling packed grandstands, but people aren’t as engaged if one team dominates and there’s little in the way of a scrap for victory honours. Evidence of the domination was the margin of Verstappen’s latest drubbing: 24.1 seconds over Lewis Hamilton, with Russell brilliantly beating Perez’s similar charge from a poor Q2 exit to seal third.

Yet, this still represents an important moment of F1 2023. It was arguably (we’ve got important caveats to cover further on) the smallest Red Bull winning gap of the year so far. And it was Mercedes that managed it.

Again, the post-Barcelona-2022 feeling rears its head.

“For me, [that was] definitely the best the car’s been the past year and a half. So, that's kudos to the amazing group of people we have back at the factory, who continue to work hard and push the car forward," Lewis Hamilton

After that contest, Mercedes team boss Wolff said, “we bet we can fight for a championship”, having addressed the W13’s porpoising problem with a major floor and front wing update.

This time, the Black Arrows squad has a W14 that’s much changed, finally, after the new sidepods and suspension arrived in Monaco and sent it down the Red Bull-style route of upper aerodynamic surfaces.

Mercedes reckons it needed the shock of its 2023 car being just as off the pace as its predecessor at the start of the season to take the decision to abandon its previous design path, in what Wolff says was a “wake-up call”. Ferrari has finally made a similar decision with the SF-23, per its surprise updates last weekend.

And so, with its adapted machine, Mercedes secured its best result of the season so far in Spain. And Wolff claims that Hamilton’s gap to Verstappen at the chequered flag was “was 15s in reality” as “Lewis at the end was cruising”.

Hamilton could have been closer to Verstappen at the end without backing off late on, reckons Toto Wolff

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Hamilton certainly backed off to the flag, particularly in the final four tours. But the gap when both he and Verstappen had attempted their fastest laps of the race, with the latter sealing it by 0.336s over Perez and 0.346 to Hamilton, was 18.7s.

The difference between this and Wolff’s assertion is roughly explained by the “two/three tenths” he says Red Bull was quicker per lap over Barcelona’s 66-lap distance, which works out as a 13.2s/19.8s winning margin.

So, if we take the fastest lap gap as the cutoff between F1’s two most recent world title-winning drivers, given it signalled the end of the chase at the start of the final stints, we arrive at this being the closest gap to a Red Bull victory so far this year (excluding the strange end to the Australian GP).

Alonso’s 20.7s to Perez in Jeddah was boosted by a mid-race safety car. Charles Leclerc was 24.4s behind Verstappen at the time of his Bahrain retirement and set to fall further back over the remaining 17 laps.

“For me, [that was] definitely the best the car’s been the past year and a half,” Hamilton said after the Spanish race.

“So, that's kudos to the amazing group of people we have back at the factory, who continue to work hard and push the car forward. It felt the best this weekend; it felt the best [in qualifying] and today that it's felt for the past 14/15 months, whatever it is [since the W13 was launched].”

Russell made an interesting point in the same post-race press conference. That “the car naturally feels really strong [on] a lot of these new circuits with new Tarmac. And when you go to a track like here or Bahrain, there's a lot of tyre deg”. Therefore, Mercedes’ performance on what Russell considers an unfavourable track surface against Red Bull takes on added significance.

Russell notes tyre deg is a big factor at older circuits, but Mercedes still fared well in Spain

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

But Mercedes is remaining rigidly realistic in its expectations with its upgraded car.

Hamilton says, “I’m more focused on making sure next year we have the car to challenge them from day one”, which is significant in the context of his current contract negotiations. But, most presciently from Wolff, there is this: “We need to remain cool, because last year we were looking pretty decent in Barcelona.”

Indeed, having worked on its porpoising problem in Spain last year, Mercedes was shocked to discover the additional issue of its awful ride problem over the bumps in the Monaco and Baku races that followed.

The case for optimism at Mercedes centres on this: in 2023, F1 has already visited Baku and Monaco, tracks where it so suffered last year. And when it comes to the latter, Monaco was a Mercedes bogey track even in its years of domination because of problems with tyre warm-up

So, should the team be worried that it’s set to face another false dawn moment as it prepares for the rest of 2023 and a desired 2024 title challenge? There are two ways of looking at it.

The first is that yes, of course, it’s right to be cautious because F1 squads are relentlessly pragmatic. It’s not for nothing that Wolff says “I'm never optimistic – only fools are optimistic”. But he did go on to add: “Generally I think it feels different to last year.”

A note of restraint should also be sounded regarding Barcelona being an outlier track. The teams and drivers know it so well that things can go a little differently when they arrive elsewhere with less data to rely on.

Plus, the cloud-cooled conditions did flatter Mercedes last Sunday – compared to Aston and Ferrari. And Red Bull could also have been holding back somewhat at a track where its package really excelled.

There are some caveats to keep Mercedes' optimism in check, such as Barcelona's conditions and Red Bull not unleashing its full potential

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

But the case for optimism at Mercedes centres on this: in 2023, F1 has already visited Baku and Monaco, the tracks where it so suffered last year. And when it comes to the latter, Monaco was a Mercedes bogey track even in its years of domination because of problems with tyre warm-up.

Now, Mercedes heads to Canada, where Hamilton is always mighty (even with the recalcitrant W13 last year), and then smooth, fast track types in the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone and the Hungaroring.

Spa, where Red Bull was so crushingly dominant last year, is a key pre-summer break test of Mercedes’ smoother ride – with Wolff saying the W14 is now a “really more solid platform” in that respect.

This is an area where the RB18 and RB19 have excelled and making progress here is a vital indicator on whether Mercedes, or anyone else given the leading cars all now look rather alike, can finally catch Red Bull.

The run to the summer break will be a true test of Mercedes' form with its updated W14

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images