RonMexico wrote: ↑16 Dec 2021, 21:00
Has anyone come up with a reasonable hypothesis for the large jump in Mercedes performance from around Turkey onwards?
It's not a large jump. I think it's just setup and getting the tyres to work. Also ignoring Lewis and looking at Valteri, the car has not improved much outside of having a better back end because of setup and tyres.
People dont like to look at it.. but it's very much down to Hamilton's abilities in the car. He has been improving in fitness from covid and i think he just started to gel more with the car and simply got it setup right to extract more from it.
Even looking on Brazil. There was nothing to suggest there was this massive engine advantage. It was just down to driving and experience with the circuit.
The mercedes car runs well on a stiffer tyre contrstuction as the platform is more stable. When its on the softer compounds it doesnt deal well whem theyre overheated or even when there isnt enough temperature.
The redbull on the other hand has the best performance, but i suspect it natural degrades more over the race distance of its driver cannot maintain the pace as well as Hamilton in the mercedes. And we have seen this with hamilton vs Button and Rosberg. It's no coincidence that he manages the tyres well and maintains a high pace.