In 2019 they had poor top speed in relation to Ferrari which was down to Ferrari cheating with the fuel flow, so it wasn’t a straight up comparison there. As soon as the TD was issued, that speed disappeared.F1Krof wrote: ↑26 Jul 2022, 11:31Strongly agree. TD will do nothing to shake the order. As for Merc being down on straightline speed, it's because of their aero concept. They have too much drag versus the downforce they manage to create. Remember back in 2019, they were kind of on a similar situation, but the thing different back then was that they had comparatively good downforce to make up for the straightline disadvantage. This time around, relatively they could be in similar DF to Drag ratio, however compared to Red Bull and Ferrari, they are far back.
Hungaroring will be bonkers for Mercedes. Their high downforce setup is lagging compared to RBR and Ferrari. I might even go further and say that they'll fight with Mclarens, especially in Qualy.
As for Ferrari, well said in previous posts, their only competition is Ferrari Engine, Strategy Department and Driver Errors.
If the Hungary surface is somewhat smooth, I think Mercedes can be closer than last race. But so far, all predictions seem to be way off so who knows. With the rain forecast, it will likely be a crazy race anyway so let’s see.