Why there's no reason to expect a Ferrari fightback

Lewis Hamilton is right to warn that you can never be complacent when it comes to sealing a world championship. He stands on the brink of being crowned for a fifth time, but knows better than anyone that you can't relax until you know it's signed, sealed and delivered - just look at what happened in 2007, when his seemingly impregnable lead evaporated in China and Brazil.

Sebastian Vettel has no chance of winning the world championship - it would be far more improbable even than Kimi Raikkonen's '07 turnaround - and he'd be on the back foot even if he wasn't 67 points behind. While the terrible weather that hit Austin during Friday practice means we had no chance to evaluate the relative performance of Mercedes and Ferrari on the day, the previous three weekends have proved emphatically that the silvers cars are the faster by some margin.

While Ferrari has brought a floor upgrade to Austin that could change things, its form over the past three races at three different circuits paints a very consistent picture of the performance deficit in qualifying. On average, Vettel has been 0.612% off in qualifying. This translates to approaching seven tenths of a second over a lap of Austin - more than even a substantial floor upgrade is likely to produce. Even though the gap isn't as big in the race, that still puts Ferrari a step behind Mercedes.

"It's pretty clear we need to be quick enough to win the races and then it depends on what the others are doing," said Vettel. "In the last races, we didn't have the speed.

"Obviously, we were missing something in the last couple of races. We clearly didn't have the speed to be up there. We need to make sure that the next couple of races show us the direction and we get the results I think we deserve."

But for a clear indication of how bad it has got for Ferrari, just look at the pattern of performance over the season. The last three races are among Ferrari's four weakest of the year pace-wise, with only the Australian Grand Prix producing a bigger deficit. This isn't a temporary blip, it's a sustained slump.

Exactly where Ferrari's pace has gone - and while Mercedes has unquestionably got on top of its car, with recent engine upgrades and aerodynamic developments as well as tyre management playing a part, it's clear Ferrari has also slipped back given the gap to Red Bull has closed - is a good question. But most point to the power unit not producing the same kick that it once did, for whatever conspiratorial reason you favour.

Combined with that, Hamilton has hit a tremendous run of form with Mercedes, and even when things have gone wrong he's been able to turn the race on its head. Twice in the last four grands prix, Hamilton has overtaken Vettel on track, while the Ferrari driver has had too many mishaps - most recently his collision with Max Verstappen at Suzuka while attempting an opportunistic pass.

Unless Ferrari somehow finds the pace that was once there and has now vanished, there's no reason to expect things to be any different at Austin this weekend. That means most likely a Mercedes one-two and a title won.

Hamilton's constant refrain about not counting his chickens and taking it one step at a time might sound tedious, but it's standard practice. From a psychological perspective, the need is always to remain focused on the process of winning races rather than being concerned about the objective - get the process right and the objectives will be achieved. Perhaps there's a lesson there for Ferrari?

It's not an easy thing to do, and the repetition of the mantra of taking it one step at a time is part of the mechanism used to keep that razor-sharp focus. If Hamilton were to allow himself to feel like it was job done, then there's a risk of something going badly wrong. That's to be avoided, even if he still might win the title without turning up to the final three races.

"If I wanted information on a new underfloor, I would leave it in the garage until I could run on dry tyres otherwise confusion will reign. But then again, confusion is what Ferrari seems to be good at" Gary Anderson

"As a team, none of us are saying how cool it would be if it happened this weekend or the next, we're not focusing on ifs," said Hamilton on Thursday of the prospect of an Austin coronation.

"We're focusing on making sure that we deliver. There's still 100 points available. We can just never be complacent in life and in a championship as intense as this we expect Ferrari to punch back hard this weekend, so we can't be relaxed in any way, shape or form. We've got to make sure we come here and raise the bar again."

The rain won't have helped Ferrari given the upgrade it has to evaluate. Kimi Raikkonen ran the new floor in first practice, but as Autosport technical expert Gary Anderson explains, the data gathered will have been of little use.

"Basically, the intermediates and the wets have a bigger diameter to reduce the effect of this, but if you are trying to test anything that is circuit surface-sensitive you are basically wasting your time," says Anderson.

"Also, the balance you run in the wet and the reduced forced generated under braking, and to a lesser extent when cornering, changes the car's sensitivity.

"If I was trying to get information on a new underfloor, I would leave it in the garage until I could run competitive times on dry tyres otherwise confusion will reign. But then again, confusion is what Ferrari seems to be good at."

Come the afternoon, neither Ferrari had the new floor fitted, with both cars sporting a higher-downforce rear wing for the conditions. Not that it mattered much. It will be interesting to see if Ferrari gambles on running the new floor on Saturday, or reverts to the tried and tested configuration.

While running was limited, as is always the case in the rain, free practice one was surprisingly busy with 258 laps completed. With conditions worse in the afternoon when the rain returned after the track had dried up in the middle of the day, the track was less busy - only 116 laps were registered in the final 90 minutes of practice.

There are two reasons for Formula 1 teams minimising running in these conditions. The first is the one most often talked about, which is the amount of standing water and the danger posed by the conditions.

But there's a second, more significant, factor - the relative shortage of tyres. Each driver is allocated four sets of wets and three sets of intermediates for the weekend, with an extra set of intermediates made available at the FIA's discretion if Friday is wet or there is a high probability of rain on Saturday and Sunday.

The upshot is that even if you do want to gather data and practice in the damp conditions, you run the risk of compromising the rest of your weekend if the rain remains. So the dice are doubly loaded against lots of laps being completed, which is a shame for the hardy fans who braved the cold and rain.

We can hope for a Ferrari pace revival, as that would make for a more dramatic weekend. But it's nothing more than the hope of returning to a time when it was nip and tuck between Mercedes and Ferrari

You could argue that the rain might give Ferrari a shot of an upset. After all, if Mercedes can't be caught in the dry then the wildcard of difficult conditions could create an opportunity. But rain has been the enemy of Vettel this year, arguably costing him victory in Germany, where he crashed out while leading, and in Hungary where Mercedes locked out the front row in rain-hit qualifying.

"I don't think you can start blaming the weather," said Vettel of slipping out of serious title contention. "Here and there maybe it didn't help but it was part of the game. I don't think you can blame outside factors like the weather for anything. You have to cope with them and others maybe coped better than we did.

"I also don't think that the rain is a problem for us. I'm not afraid if it rains. If our car's quick, it will be quick when it's dry and quick when it's wet."

And that in itself is bad news for Ferrari, because the car is no longer quick enough to beat Mercedes in a straight fight. During the first 14 races of the season, the Ferrari was more often than not quicker than the Mercedes - albeit by a smaller margin than the advantage Mercedes built when it was in the sweet spot.

In the three races that have followed, it's not been a serious victory threat. That's why all the talk of a Ferrari fightback, on current evidence, seems unlikely. And that's even before you factor in Vettel's three-place grid penalty for speeding under the red flag in first practice - the most significant event of the day in terms of impact on the weekend.

We can hope for a Ferrari revival in terms of pace from Saturday, perhaps with upgrades transforming its form because that would make for a more dramatic weekend, but the chances given recent form seem remote. It's nothing more than the hope of returning to a time in the season when it was nip and tuck between Mercedes and Ferrari.

As Hamilton predicted so many times earlier this year, Mercedes does tend to get stronger as the season progresses. And that's what has left Ferrari standing.

Hamilton, meanwhile, is continuing to have a great time - topping both sessions on Friday by more than a second, while irrelevant, shows he's in a very good place right now. And that makes him and Mercedes unstoppable.