SectorOne wrote:All in all we thought they would have a dog this year so from that perspective they have done incredibly well.
there´s no team that even comes close to the jump they made from 12 to 13.
With some normal race weekends they might be able to snatch 2nd in the championship but with Lotus coming to life it´s going to be very tough.
Without a doubt Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 have raised their game recently.Without a doubt they came from a quite lowish level in 2012 as well .
Formula 1 is always in motion and so is teams competitiveness .Teams doing it right are on the rise teams on the wrong train face the fall from the cliff.
You can always fall into a trap -Mclaren and Sauber had VERY good machinery in 2012 and failed to sustain that level of building competitive machinery.Fascinatingly cash strapped Sauber has found its speed towards the end of the season and is back or almost back to their 2012 level of competitiveness when Mclaren seems to be stuck at the end of the top 10 since day 1 this year.
But one can clearly say Ferrari can extract quite a lot from a less than ideal base design -when Mercedes failed to improve any of their last designs over the year relative to the opposition.
you may call this inyear development strength ,i call it pin pointing problems ,nailing and erasing them.Mclaren always looked like THE team with the ability to turn around a dodged car -but now it looks more like they are the masters of extracting 100% from a base design.This years car is just a tad too bad as a base car ....they cannot lift it above a certain level.A mirror of Mercedes in 2010,11,12 really.
We have no insight why Mclaren has lost what apears to be found now to a degree at Mercedes.I doubt it is Hamilton but who knows.
Intriguingly Mercedes had a very competitive time when things looked increasingly shaky for them in stuttgart.Now the tides have ebbed away and they fall back into remote control cruising .
sure the title is decided ,they have won several GPs mission accomplished.
I certainly do not understand why not stating -we are not interested in results anymore we work for 2014 already to hit the ground running ...