Mercedes feeling the squeeze

In a cruel twist, Red Bull appears to have struck serious form right on the eve of the mid-season break.

With renewed one-lap pace (comparatively speaking), and ominous high fuel-load form, the RB11 has well and truly come into its own.

“From Friday morning, first run on the track, the car felt good. I think it’s the first race in a long time where we haven’t really touched the balance throughout the weekend”, said Daniel Ricciardo. “We haven’t been chasing our tail, the car had more feeling about it this weekend, at least from my side. I felt like I could dictate the balance a bit more and position the car more where I wanted to”.

Not having to tweak your settings despite a 10-degree drop in temperature from Saturday to Sunday is very, very impressive and the type of harmony that most engineers would give their right arm to achieve. In contrast, both Ferrari drivers on Friday were complaining of terrible understeer through the fast flip-flop direction changes at the Hungaroring.

By Saturday the Maranello squad had settled on an effective compromise with their set-up, but their superb result on Sunday owes as much to being able to run in clean air as it does to studious data analysis. Sebastian Vettel is a formidable animal when leading from the front and (as he did in Sepang), has a Prost-like ability to control the pace he likes to run at.

The same can be said of Mercedes. Having been jumped by Ferrari at the start, Neither Nico Rosberg nor the superior pace of Lewis Hamilton was able to manifest itself in turbulent air.

With Hamilton on the softer (faster) tyre and with a 15 km/h straight-line advantage, he still made a dog’s breakfast trying to find a way past Daniel Ricciardo’s RB11.

Only four months prior, Hamilton was able to lap Ricciardo’s Red Bull without breaking a sweat and now found himself making desperate moves to jump the Australian, resulting in a ham-fisted overtaking attempt with ended in contact and a penalty for the Brit.

“I just had no front end and understeered into him”, recalled a frustrated Hamilton, who trundled around in sixth, before diving into the pits a new set of boots.

Many will point to an improved aero/chassis package for Red Bull’s upsurge, but without a compliant and progressive power curve even the most dynamic handling package will remain buried. This suggests Renault have cured their mapping concerns, probably through no small assistance from sister outfit Toro Rosso.

Yes, Ferrari and Mercedes still have enough engine poke in hand to pull the stops out when required in qualifying, but as we saw during race day at Hungary, only the RB11 appeared truly comfortable in traffic.

Make no mistake, Mercedes are feeling pressure from all sides now. When the virtual safety car was deployed to clean up Nico Hulkenberg’s self-destructing Force India, anyone with an abacus and a set of baby blues could see that we were in for at least five very processional laps.

Ricciardo therefore enjoyed those quintuple circuits without having to tear through his softer (faster) tyres.

Rosberg could have pitted for softs, but as Mercedes boss Toto Wolff explained: “when the virtual safety car deployed, the prime (medium) tyre was still under the pod… The virtual safety car came out, he was two corners before the pit, we called him in, and the only tyre available was the prime”.

Why not wait another lap, before the actual safety car was deployed and opt for a fresh set of soft tyres? Was it another case of information overload a la Sepang and Monaco? If the potential threat of Ferrari was causing Mercedes a headache before, Red Bull’s unexpected bounce-back will be about as welcome as Rihanna gate-crashing a Pussycat Dolls reunion.

No doubt Mercedes and Ferrari (via their partnership with HAAS Formula One in the United States) will be working hard over the summer break to extend their margin over Red Bull, but the Milton Keynes squad have no shortage of resources and will be hungry to push development having found their way out of the wilderness.

The high-speed, medium-to-low down-force tracks of Spa and Monza could again flatter Mercedes, but don’t be surprised to see the Brackley outfit under threat once again at the twisty confines of Singapore and Suzuka.

With distractions aplenty, expect Sebastian Vettel to take advantage of any potential dubiety at Mercedes. It mightn’t be enough for the German to execute a Prost-like upset like we saw in 1986, but Vettel, Raikkonen and the boys at Red Bull and Williams will be doing everything possible to make themselves a hindrance of immense proportions during the second-half of the season.