“Formula 1, Mercedes” by autosport.com is licensed under CC BY 3.0
Seven races into the 2021 Formula One World Championship season, there’s an unfamiliar look to the table. Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is leading the driver’s race with 131 points, while perennial champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes finds himself in second with 119 points.
This is certainly an intriguing development. For several years, playing Mercedes to win in F1 betting was about as safe a wager as there was in sports. The team has won seven straight titles in both the driver and constructors’ championships. Hamilton was the F1 world champion in six of the past seven seasons and seven times overall during his career.
Verstappen has won three races and finished second in three others. He’s earned two pole positions and posted three fastest laps. By contrast, Hamilton also shows three wins and two seconds. However, he also had a seventh and a 15th-place finish, leaving the British driver out of the points in both of those races. Hamilton has earned two poles and posted a pair of fastest laps. Red Bull also leads the World Constructors’ Championship standings 215-178 over Mercedes.
Red Bull Rallying
Red Bull won four titles in a row from 2010-13, both in the constructors’ and the drivers’ competitions. Sebastien Vettel was the winning driver each year. They are crediting this season’s resurgence to the Honda engines in their cars.
“I have no illusions,” Mercedes team boss Tito Wolff told Speedweek. “With the current package that Red Bull has with the power and the good chassis, they are very difficult to crack.
“We no longer have the advantage we had on the straights. And power up the mountain, that’s the only chance you have. Or on the following straight, you have to be faster, and we are not at the moment. (They) have clearly made a big leap, bigger than we did, you can see it on the straights now, there is no passing it at the moment.
“Formula 1, Redbull” by formula1.com is licensed under CC BY 3.0
“They have made a huge step forward with their power unit, the introduction of the second power unit. And their race car is good, no doubt about that.”
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner scoffed at the Mercedes suggestion that the entire Red Bull advantage was down to a more powerful engine.
“We’re not allowed to make progress,” Horner said in response to Wolff’s comments. “I don’t know what he’s referencing there.
“I think that it’s the same specification as the first unit. We’ve run a much smaller rear wing, so that’s why the straight line performance was strong. I think Honda are doing a great job, but we don’t see a sudden significant increase in power.”
Honda technical director Toyoharu Tanabe added his voice in support of Horner, insisting it’s the entire package that is providing the Red Bull team with the edge over Mercedes. He believes the engine gains have as much to do with better energy management by the team.
“On the team side we are introducing new parts so that we can evolve every race,” Tanabe told Motorsport.com. “The power unit is the same [specification]all the time, but we are learning better how to use energy management etc. for every race.
“We are looking at the characteristics of each circuit, and I think that such daily developments are connected to the current improvement.”
Mercedes Won’t Give Up
Those in the Mercedes camp aren’t willing to surrender their F1 reign without a fight. They think they’ve got the team to close the gap, but recognize they’ll need to be on their best behavior the remainder of the season to make it so.
“The way we look at it is this team at its best can beat Red Bull,” Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said. “I think [in France]we saw that the opportunities we missed were the difference.
“We know it’s going to be difficult. We think that they [Red Bull] are the favourites. Clearly they’ve got a very good package, but if we perform at our best we can beat them and we can win the championship.”
Horner isn’t about to foolishly count out Mercedes just because the defending champs are currently down.
“We need to keep the momentum going because Mercedes is an incredibly strong team,” Horner said. “It’s only a matter of time before they strike back, but we just have to continue what we’re doing.”
