Nik, you are clearly carrying a bias, i’d go so far as to say it favours Redbull to the point of denial, but thats fine, I myself am a massive McLaren fan and I’m sure it regularly clouds my judgement. Point is, would you care to declare that bias and attempt to remove it when making posts because lines like “[Redbull]Have not seen the reliability gremlins that many predicted” rather destroys the crediblity of the rest of your post (also, Redbull were the last big team to introduce an F-Duct, Maybe your thinking of Ferrari?). Also don’t let your bias for Redbull cloud other teams progres, that also looks silly.
Anyways,
Ferrari, second fastest in Bahrain, but it became clear their cars performance is highly circuit specific, suffered due to there distraction by the F-Duct an their development, like the car has been reactive not innovative, coupled with a faliure to pick the right battles it’s taken till Silverstone to adress a fundementally quick cars deficiencies, Turkey being the defining example. Essentially third on pace since Malaysia Alonso has been carrying the team, remains to be seen whether they can now stay ahead of McLaren after McLarens Silverstone upgrade debacle.
Redbull, have lost an obscene amount of points through reliability an swervegate, but yet their car has been undoubtably the fastest thing in F1, all round since the begining of the season. However while there quali pace is phenomenal, Spain Q3 was really quite scary, McLaren an Ferrari have usually been there in the race, in Turkey McLaren was fundementally faster, an this was not the case in Spain. Some of this has been down to illegaly shaped suspension being removed and some of this was due to a faster rate of development from McLaren. However while McLaren have caught Redbull in many ways, Redbull have remained ahead by foucusing inferior recources intelligently, they introduced the F-Duct last of the big four, an nearly last of all, yet when it came online it worked, an without it, they just kept on getting faster by working on the most important things, have really shown up Ferrari approach.
McLaren, start of season, clear third on pace, throughout the fly aways, worrying defficiency in quali trim. Spain outqualify Ferrari, Turkey, faster than Redbull in race trim an leave ferrari in the dust along with Redbull. That is relentless improvment. However, they’ve bitten of more than they can chew at Silverstone, Valencia was were they really proved it though, without an upgrade still they were second. This new upgrade is a huge rebuild of there rear packaging, it’s a huge amount tighter, but their suspension is in the way, it’s the first time they’ve stalled since Germany 09, I suspect there back in third for Silverstone due mainly the disruption this upgrade has caused. Certainly the most improved team till before this weekend, basically judgement must be reserved till Hockenheim, but it must be admitted that they rushed the upgrade an suffered for it here. On the otherhand, looking at the upgrade, how much further does it look like they’ve gone compared to Ferrari, huh?
Merc, well they’ve started with a bad car, an they;ve never been more than fourth. Not a fantastic return all round. Howeverchanging hands is an upheaval an next year is when judgements can be made.
Renault, just wow, if they’d started off with a decent car they could well be in it, hard to know how well they’d do starting from a higher benchmark “the last second is always the hardest”. Certainly annihalated their rival for the year, ie FI, an they’ve made Mercedes the new prey, bvery impressed.
