In total, 181 points is the mountain Ferrari has to climb. That’s the amount if they want to catch and overhaul Mercedes to claim the 2015 Formula One Constructor’s Championship.
But with a third of the championship left to run and wins coming thinner than Jacque Villeneuve’s hairline, it’s simply not going to happen.
This makes Mercedes’ gamble at Monza all the more intelligible. No I’m not talking about tyre pressures. I mean the lottery Mercedes entered into by running their 2016 prototype power unit when they really didn’t need to.
With limited in-season testing available, teams need to prepare as much as they can for the following season. If they don’t spend their allotted development tokens they simply lose them, a bit like a government-funded arts council needing to justify their program by suddenly commissioning someone to paint a park full of trees bright blue.
As such, Mercedes felt they had enough breathing space to trawl through data for next season. High Performance Powertrain head Andy Cowell confided that the boffins back at headquarters were leaving no stone unturned and “looking for any issues to check that we aren’t doing something foolhardy.”
With Nico Rosberg’s powertrain crying enough during practice at Monza, there could have been cause for alarm and indeed an itch to revert back to old faithful 2015 powertrains. However, with Ferrari suddenly inching within three-tenths of the boys at Brackley, it simply wasn’t an option any more. While Rosberg was forced to use his high-mileage Spa engine, Lewis Hamilton – championship leader – effectively became the guinea-pig.
They needn’t have worried. The reported 40bhp advantage the 2016 prototype unit was used with extreme prejudice over the opposition, earning Hamilton a 25-second Italian Grand Prix victory over Sebastian Vettel.
On even terms, Mercedes have a 0.2 second per lap advantage over Ferrari, although the Maranello squad do have another four development tokens left to bridge that gap.
It’s no surprise then that Mercedes have rejected any possibility of supplying power units to Red Bull Racing, despite the Milton Keynes outfit already cutting ties with Renault for the 2016 season.
Daimler’s board have spent millions upon millions of dollars and deflected numerous poison darts to get to the pointy-end of Formula One. Yes, by conceivably supplying powertrains to (and beating) what is arguably the best chassis builder in pit-lane, they would prove without doubt Mercedes are the best team on the grid, but such altruism is no longer required with Ferrari now on the march.
Ferrari’s up-turn in form is bad news for Red Bull. With a competitive protagonist like Ferrari looking good for 2016, the pressure on Mercedes to play the sporting philanthropist has suddenly evaporated faster than a Renault water pump – along with the once cavalier demeanour of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner.
Like most sports, everything is cyclical. It’s not the round black things Horner should be concerned about, but the periodic wheel of karma.
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