2021 Pecking order prediction

[Jambier]

Alpha Tauri too tends to do many 'glory runs'...
AT/STR is a good team that builds solid cars and often introduces cool aero innovations. They're even better since they started using more RB parts, and the Honda will certainly improve well. that's why we one must beware of them.... but it's also a team that tends to run with lower fuel loads than others, and to shine during the winters and in FP1 and FP2... every year since 2015 at least, many see them in the top 5....
And now we hear that Tsunoda was opening his DRS 200 meters earlier than the others...

Also the AT cars are sometime very quick, for instance in Bahrain last year, in some races.
And slow on other tracks.

So we will have to see on a full season, this is causing them some great results sometimes, but also poor final championship ranking.

[Bill]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

[Herr_Koos]

merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

Dangerous assumption to make.

[godlameroso]

You can undo your token spend, so we'll know where Mercedes spent their tokens if they revert to last year's component.

[dans79]

You can undo your token spend, so we'll know where Mercedes spent their tokens if they revert to last year's component.

That assumes the FIA releases that information to the public, and I see nothing in the rules indicating they need to do so.

Not to mention if they already used them, whatever they changed looks so similar to last years component that no one can tell the difference, so it's unlikely someone would notice when they reverted.

[SmallSoldier]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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[aMessageToCharlie]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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Exactly this.

Claiming Red Bull "ended the season no1" is ignoring that Merc easily won 13/17 races to RBR's 2 (two) and pretty much gifted away the final race. Meanwhile RBR hadnt won a race in 11 GPs til Abu Dhabi.

[McL-H]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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Past results are no predictor for the future. People at these teams come and go. Rules have changed. Margins of error increase when teams keep trying to find more and more pace from an already quick car, and it is a thin line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Mercedes is not immune to getting it wrong. In fact, the team showed some clear signs of slackness at the end of last year at Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

I am not saying Mercedes can’t fix their issues. But I find it odd to say that they will, just because of their dominance in the past 7 years. That dominance can be gone (and more than gone) in a heartbeat. The past 7 years won’t help them much from that point on.

[SmallSoldier]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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Past results are no predictor for the future. People at these teams come and go. Rules have changed. Margins of error increase when teams keep trying to find more and more pace from an already quick car, and it is a thin line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Mercedes is not immune to getting it wrong. In fact, the team showed some clear signs of slackness at the end of last year at Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

I am not saying Mercedes can’t fix their issues. But I find it odd to say that they will, just because of their dominance in the past 7 years. That dominance can be gone (and more than gone) in a heartbeat. The past 7 years won’t help them much from that point on.

I would argue that past results do influence the future... What Mercedes has learned and implemented during those 7 years to be ahead of the competition wouldn’t have disappeared and with cars that are an evolution of the ones in previous years (and not a blank slate or starting from scratch as in 2022) they will be able to apply those learnings to this year’s car.

I agree that it gets harder to make an already fast car even faster, but it’s also true that they had a base car that was already very capable and that hasn’t changed that much... They still have one of the best (if not the best) engine in the grid, they have a chassis that is also one of the strongest (if not the strongest) in the grid and the changes for this season are around the aero performance driven by the changes to the floor, therefore while other teams have to not only focus on “recovering” the loss of downforce, they need to find an extra to cut the gap to Mercedes... That’s their advantage.

Now, I’m not saying that Mercedes can’t get it wrong, but from a probability perspective is way more probable that they will continue to have their leadership position than they will go backwards in the grid... So far, all the information we have is from 3 days of Testing were data is very hard to analyze, we all know the tricks and games the team’s play, so we are only basing this Pecking Order predictions on more gut feeling than hard data.

Mercedes showed up to testing with a car that showed signs of rear instability (and even with that, their pace wasn’t that off, specially on the long runs)... That in itself is already encouraging for the current champions... It is not much different than other Winter Testing were Mercedes wasn’t considered to be leader until racing actually started.

You mentioned people coming and going, we can’t forget that when Mercedes was developing this season’s car the budget cap wasn’t yet in place, therefore they still were leading the grid in terms of budget / resources... Which in addition to having the most time of probably any team developing their 2021 car, gives them on paper the highest probability to continue their dominance this year.

Could they have got it very wrong? Yes... Could Red Bull be faster this season? Yes... Could we say that based on testing? I’m afraid not.


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[dans79]

Mercedes showed up to testing with a car that showed signs of rear instability (and even with that, their pace wasn’t that off, specially on the long runs)... That in itself is already encouraging for the current champions... It is not much different than other Winter Testing were Mercedes wasn’t considered to be leader until racing actually started.

I'd add to that by pointing out the following.

F1.com has Mercedes ahead on long run pace by 0.39.
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... PHDmp.html

Long runs where done on the harder compound, and that's always what Mercedes does their best on. They have always had a hard time getting the softer compounds dialed in.

It's not surprising they had a hard time with the softer compounds, preseason testing was the shortest it's ever been, the weather was inhospitable, and they had a reliability issue that basically cost them 1/6th of their testing time.

Given both cars doing a filming day, and two weeks to analyze the data, I'd be surprised if they aren't substantially better than what we saw in testing come FP1.

[Zynerji]

Merc should have filmed first, tested second... might have had a much better test.

[dans79]

Merc should have filmed first, tested second... might have had a much better test.

A lot of fans, including several members of the media believe one of the reasons they did the filming days after testing was to try out whatever they spent their tokens on.

As of right now no one has any indication of what they actually spent their tokens on.

As I've said before that's fairly significant, because everything that has an impact on performance besides the springs and dampers that they would be required to spend tokens on is a visible part.

[nzjrs]

One argument for them testing things in the filming day afterwards is that it is consistent with their previous behavior of not showing everything in the first test but bringing a big upgrade to the second test.

[cheeRS]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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Past results are no predictor for the future. People at these teams come and go. Rules have changed. Margins of error increase when teams keep trying to find more and more pace from an already quick car, and it is a thin line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Mercedes is not immune to getting it wrong. In fact, the team showed some clear signs of slackness at the end of last year at Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

I am not saying Mercedes can’t fix their issues. But I find it odd to say that they will, just because of their dominance in the past 7 years. That dominance can be gone (and more than gone) in a heartbeat. The past 7 years won’t help them much from that point on.

The problem is that you mis-quoted that oft-cited cliche. What it should have been is "Past success does not guarantee future performance". Past results (or facts/data) are pricesly what predict future performance, success. Not guarantee, but predict. As others have stated, 2021 isn't a huge regulation change. That "past performance", namely, the Merc PU, chassis, team, drivers, etc. means that it would be highly, highly improbable that Merc doesn't continue their dominance, or at least winning margin. Does it guarantee it? Of course not. But if I said that Max Verstappen can't be considered a great driver because you can't rely on his past results to predict his future success I'd be a fool 9/10 times.

F1 is a yearly War made of many, many little battles. Not just with tech, not just on the racetrack. Any edge, any advantage counts. If sandbagging flummoxes competitors and demoralizes them after the first race, Merc is absolutely going to sandbag. They don't just look at testing as testing. They look at testing as the first public instance where they can being to win and to erode their competitors' morale and strategy.

They don't just try to make the best car. They look at winning holistically and microscopically and do whatever it takes. For them to NOT win this year would be anything but probable.

[MKlaus]

the only reason people belief Mercedes would be quickest car first race is because they got burned in 2019 when they thought ferrari will lead the field.Deep down people would rather vote Redbull.These year team pretty much use cars from last year so Rbr ended the season no1 they will carry that throughout and by adopting merc novel rear suspension they have found more performance merc on the other hand does not have any new innovation these time around

The only reason people belief Mercedes will be quickest is because of their track record, they have been the best team for 7 years in a row, 3 regulation changes and a pandemic... For them to finally forget how to build a car is silly... Yes, there are changes to the floor this year, but it isn’t a complete new set of regulations (like in 2022).

Red Bull won the last race of the season, arguably because Mercedes detuned their engines and already had the WCC and WDC won by then, not considering the fact that they stopped developing the 2021 car earlier than anyone else.

Finally, we have only had 3 days of testing, where Red Bull has showed great performance and Mercedes a few issues, but nothing to indicate that Mercedes won’t be able to overcome the “apparent” rear instability and take their dominance position once again... Not that much different than Red Bull also having rear instability during Winter Testing of 2020 and got on top of it during the season.


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Past results are no predictor for the future. People at these teams come and go. Rules have changed. Margins of error increase when teams keep trying to find more and more pace from an already quick car, and it is a thin line between getting it right and getting it wrong. Mercedes is not immune to getting it wrong. In fact, the team showed some clear signs of slackness at the end of last year at Bahrain and Abu Dhabi.

I am not saying Mercedes can’t fix their issues. But I find it odd to say that they will, just because of their dominance in the past 7 years. That dominance can be gone (and more than gone) in a heartbeat. The past 7 years won’t help them much from that point on.

engineering is not a game of lottery. when you have a team of highly skilled workforce that has demonstrated an extremely high level of understanding of building a car, that knowledge doesn't vanish in thin air.
it's one thing when the complete concept changes, where one is not guaranteed of a team having gone on the right philosophy direction. but in a continuation of a regulations with minimal change, that team of highly skilled people would understand the impact of the change and most likely, understand how to claw back the lost performance.

this is the same team that has demonstrated their skills over varying regulations, yet has comfortably won 7 double titles. every time a problem has struck, they came back with even stronger performance. just shows the quality of their knowledge, tools and processes. all that wouldn't vanish a minute.

if such a team has worked on a car for over 6 months and has confidently put it on track, they know what they have built (who knows if this is all they would ultimately race) and if there is an area that hasn't worked in tandem with the whole concept, they have the ability to fix it, unlike most other teams.