The story of the 2015 was the battle between Ferrari and Mercedes. With Mercedes being the dominant constructor for the past two seasons, Ferrari has become the only team with a shot of providing the Silver Arrows with some competition. Although it is undeniable that Ferrari made some progress on their performance, they still spent the majority of 2015 coming runner up to the Mercedes and one must wonder whether Ferrari can put some turbulence in Mercedes’ flight to the 2016 World Constructors’ Championship.
In the 2015 season, only two constructors were able to take a race victory: Mercedes and Ferrari. The majority of those race victories went to Mercedes, as had been the case in the 2014 Formula One season. With the exception of Malaysia, Hungary and Singapore, Mercedes was able to take home all of the race victories, many of which were 1-2 finishes. Some would say that is some serious progress, but does that mean that they can challenge for the World Constructors’ Championship or at least the World Drivers’ Championship?
Assuming the Mercedes car doesn’t decrease in performance this season, the answer will be no. Sure, Ferrari did challenge Mercedes in a few races, but those races are not enough. If you take a look at their 2015 victories, there were only a couple of conditions in which Ferrari could really match the pace of Mercedes.
The first condition happened in Hungary. After some early issues, Mercedes found themselves battling though the field and getting in more trouble. This left Ferrari as the race winners, virtually by default. If Mercedes hadn’t had these issues, there is no way that Ferrari could have come close to challenging their rivals. Ferrari’s win in Malaysia was a similar situation to Hungary. Once they pitted during the early safety car period, Mercedes had a hard time pushing their way through the field. This doesn’t help Ferrari in the long haul of the season because Mercedes are on form for most of the races and were able to take most of the pole positions in 2015. These means that the odds of Mercedes suffering from some issues that cause them to lose ground will not be very likely.
The other condition was the type of circuit, as we saw in Singapore. Street circuits are very different than the regular circuits, in that they require better handling and not as much power performance. This gives teams that are lacking the flat out speed a chance to finish with better results. These circuits play into the hands of Ferrari because they are down on power compared to the Mercedes, but their car seems to handle the tight corners of the streets better than Mercedes. However, since there are only a few street circuits on the calendar, this doesn’t really help Ferrari in getting the boost that they need in order to take the championship.
What Ferrari lacked in 2015 was consistency in their pace. At some circuits, they were very fast and at others they were struggling to keep pace with teams other than Mercedes. Ferrari has to be good at all of the circuits in order to provide any real competition. Unfortunately, there haven’t been any real signs of improvement to show that Ferrari will be able to keep up with Mercedes this season. Until that happens, Ferrari will not be able to challenge Mercedes for the championship. This means that it is probably already safe to say that Mercedes will take the World Championship title again. However, it will be interesting to see which team comes out ahead when the rule changes occur in 2017.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any other agency, organization, employer or company. Assumptions made in any analysis contained within this article are not reflective of the position of any entity other than the author.
