GPR-A wrote: ↑16 Jul 2018, 16:34
LM10 wrote: ↑16 Jul 2018, 16:06
GPR-A wrote: ↑16 Jul 2018, 15:46
It indeed is, for some. Especially, when you lack awareness of the energy that is put into the tires while cornering at max possible speed (while chasing) and at lift and cruise speed (while comfortably leading in free air). I guess the premium of being on pole is not well understood.
Maybe Mercedes should build a car which doesn't make problems when driving in dirty air. Both Vettel and Kimi followed other cars for several laps in Spielberg and both didn't even have a bit of an issue.
In Silverstone Hamilton thought that his car was damaged when he was on his way through the field. That shows how much he's used to be in clean air.
I guess you have to wait for Ferrari to win a title (which they haven't in a decade, in which time, two different teams have won 4 title doubles) before calling out Mercedes. The situation wasn't different last year either!
It's about how a team approaches a weekend OR even the design philosophy itself, where if they see a benefit of having a setup or a philosophy that helps them bolt the car on pole and lead away from there, they can afford to pay the price of struggling when things don't go to plan. Mercedes has been in that league for a while now, which based on their success %, isn't a bad philosophy!
For the sake of Ferrari and the competition, you should keep praying that Mercedes never gets a handle on the tires, because if they do, the season would be over before you think it is, like it was last season after second half. Remember, Vettel went into Summer break with a good lead in his hands. And Ferrari are yet to prove that, they don't commit harakiri like they did last year and Vettel is generally a blink away from the red mist. There are a lot of things that can go wrong!
You're right, Mercedes could afford having a car which struggled in dirty air because they simply were superior, got every pole and disappeared upfront. This year, until now it's a bit of a different story as we've seen and that's why they're having more problems.
I don't think that Mercedes doesn't handle tyres well at the moment. It's just an excuse due to the fact that they are behind on points.
Last year was different. Last year Mercedes clearly had tyre problems on Sundays and they managed to solve them at the half of the season. On the other hand, Ferrari had a good car from get-go, however, they didn't improve it well and this way Mercedes had an easy time.
This year Mercedes has never had tyre problems on race pace. They had them on Saturdays, but I'm confident that they solved them already in Barcelona. From that day on they have not told any words about a possible tyre issue and we all know that they had reported them every weekend in the first few races of the season.
You're right regarding Ferrari having to prove it until the end, as well, though.
(i.e. "A lot of that was down to our own mistakes.").