Silverstone proves Red Bull is F1's coming force

For the past 18 months or so Formula 1 has obsessed over Ferrari's revival and whether it is going to be the team to finally break Mercedes' hegemony in the V6 hybrid turbo era.

But the more time passes the more it actually looks as though Red Bull may be the team that takes the fight properly to Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in F1.

Of course Red Bull won in Spain, and then took pole in Monaco. Without a pitstop blunder on Daniel Ricciardo's car, Red Bull would have won that race too.

But circumstances also played a major role in these headline results, chiefly the Mercedes drivers crashing into one another at Barcelona - gifting their rivals an open goal - then struggling to get the most from the new ultra-soft tyre in qualifying in Monte Carlo, which allowed Ricciardo to upstage them.

Plus Monaco is a street track, a particular case that is not representative of likely form elsewhere on conventional circuits.

And of course 'elsewhere' is where Mercedes is still peerless.

But the tide is coming, and it looks as though it may be blue and yellow rather than scarlet red.

Ferrari has scored plenty of points and a fair few podiums, but hasn't looked capable of taking a pole position or winning a race on merit this season.

It's looked decent on the pure power, short-corner circuits in Bahrain, Canada and Austria, but not much cop in Russia, or (strangely) Azerbaijan, and any early-season chances to win races through Mercedes' mistakes Ferrari hasn't taken, or hasn't been in a position to take.

Ferrari's progress seems to have stalled, while Red Bull looks increasingly formidable.

After winning three races with an underpowered Renault engine in 2014, both parties lost their way badly last season.

Renault struggled to improve its combustion power without losing ERS performance, while Red Bull produced a difficult car that took half a season of experiments and upgrades to get working properly.

But the trajectory is now undoubtedly an upward one again. The engine is working much better - and even better still since a Monaco upgrade - while Red Bull's chassis now looks potentially the best on the grid.

It's certainly very impressive under braking and on initial turn-in. In trackside viewing at Silverstone's Brooklands, Copse and Stowe corners during Friday practice it looked particularly impressive compared to the rest of the field.

The Mercedes still has advantages in other areas - its engine power allows it to run more wing than others, and the ride quality delivered by its suspension over bumps and kerbs looks unmatched, but Red Bull is gaining.

Silverstone has not been a particularly happy hunting ground for Red Bull under these V6 regulations, so the fact it was clearly the second fastest team after Friday practice for the 2016 British Grand Prix is a good indicator of progress.

Ricciardo trailed Hamilton by less than four tenths of a second after practice two, which represents a pure pace deficit of just 0.427% between the RB12 and the W07.

The gap after the equivalent session at last year's Silverstone race was 0.907%. In 2014 it was 1.061%.

That's an encouraging trend, on what you might term a more conventional circuit than the street fighting arenas Red Bull has generally done better at in recent times.

Silverstone is an old-fashioned grand prix track, with plenty of fast corners, where downforce makes all the difference - and Red Bull always has plenty of that to play with.

But it can exploit this strength better now it is no longer losing out so drastically on the straights, and having to trim many degrees of wing to compensate.

Renault's recent improvements are allowing Red Bull to unlock extra chassis performance that previously it has had to hold back in its pursuit of remaining competitive on the straights.

By contrast, Ferrari's trend has swung back into the negative. The Scuderia was within 0.369% of Mercedes after second practice at Silverstone last year. This year the gap ballooned to 0.993%.

For Williams - second fastest team here in each of the past two seasons - the gap is 2% this year, compared to 2.116% in 2015 and 1.596% in 2014.

Of course Friday practice never reveals a full picture, and there's little doubt Ferrari and Williams will be much more competitive on Saturday - particularly Williams, which often runs a different programme to its rivals and tends to make a bigger relative jump come the business end of the weekend.

But one still gets the sense this formula may be slipping away from these two teams, and more towards Red Bull, as engine performance gradually converges and aerodynamic development plays a more vital role again in whether teams flourish or flounder.

Ferrari took a lot of risks with the development of this year's SF16-H, and team principal Maurizio Arrivabene has admitted it's not been the easiest car to understand, set-up and therefore extract performance from.

Perhaps it has over-reached aerodynamically - an area that has long been a weakness for Ferrari relative to the other top teams in F1.

Tyre performance is always the curveball thrown into this mix, but since Renault introduced its latest engine Red Bull has been quicker than Ferrari in Monaco, within two tenths in Canada (where previously it was over a second slower), on par in Baku (a pure power circuit), close enough to get ahead in the race in Austria (where previously it was well behind), and now looks capable of beating Ferrari fair and square on pure pace again in Britain.

Arrivabene points out that Red Bull "is not in front of us" when quizzed about his team's performance. He is right in the basic sense, of course, but the gap is shrinking - both in terms of constructors' championship points and general car performance.

The upward trend of Red Bull's development is undeniable, and with next year's technical regulations set to bias work further still towards aerodynamics, the Milton Keynes team, rather than the one housed in Maranello, is increasingly looking like the best placed to take the fight to Mercedes in 2017.