More to Come from Merc Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg are confident Mercedes can maintain their advantage at the front of F1 in the face of expected big development pushes from their rivals over the forthcoming races. Mercedes have returned to Europe following the opening quartet of flyaway rounds having made the most dominant start to a season for 18 years courtesy of pole and race victory at each of the four grands prix so far. With next weeks Spanish GP ushering in the start of the European leg of races which traditionally herald the proper start of the in-season development race, Mercedes so-far distant rivals, notably Red Bull and Ferrari, are aware they need to close the pace gap if the championship race is not to effectively be run by mid-season. Theoretically, with by far the most competitive car in the field, Mercedes have less scope to make significant improvements to the all-conquering W05 - however, both of their drivers are adamant there is still lots more to come. Hamilton, winner of the last three races, pointed to the cars aerodynamics as one such area for refinement. Were not sitting comfortably thats for sure. Weve got more work to do, the Briton declared. The Red Bull is very, very fast through the high-speed, which tells me they maybe have a little bit more downforce than us. Last year was a massive gap between how much downforce they had [compared to what Mercedes had]. Weve definitely closed that up but I think we can do a better job, we can do more. So were going to keep pushing on that and undoubtedly Mercedes are going to keep pushing and I feel comfortable that theyll keep getting better in terms of the engine. Since returning to team ownership in 2010, Mercedes have tended to start seasons relatively strongly only for their form to tail off later in the year. Only once in that spell - 2011 - have the Brackley outfit scored more points in the second half of the season than the first. However, Rosberg, who has been with the team throughout that period, thinks they are now fully capable of maintaining the necessary rate of development. Concerned? No, because we really have a strong team now, the German insisted. Its taken four-and-a-half years and were just well set up now. Starting with [Executive Directors] Toto [Wolff] and Paddy [Lowe] at the top, filtering down I think we have a good structure now and its shown with this car. Weve built a fantastic car and so thats proof of the structure we have now in place. The 28-year-old did, however, add a note of caution given the nascent nature of the 2014 regulations. Very recently Red Bull was still the benchmark and is still the benchmark as a team - I dont think it changes that quickly - so we need to be careful and keep on improving ourselves, which we are doing, to keep our advantage or even extend it, he added. The target needs to be to extend it, thats going to be very ambitious, but that needs to be the target. At least keep our advantage and Im optimistic that we can achieve that. But saying that, this year its a development race which is much more extreme than weve seen in recent years because the regulations are so new. When the regulations are new the development curve just goes straight up for the first period and then it flattens off at some point once you cant really find so much more. But in the beginning the teams are learning so much...its really important to keep on it because the chances for the teams behind us to catch up are much bigger than, for example, if we were being in the same situation last year because the development is just going to be huge this year. #KieranWorldofF1
Posted on: Wed, 30 Apr 2014 09:11:48 +0000
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