I don't think there has ever been a dominant car this season - it's really been strategy or luck.El Scorchio wrote: ↑10 Oct 2021, 18:31Ah, I see we are back to the same old people trotting out the tired ‘dominant car’ cliche whenever the Mercedes is faster during a race weekend.
By that definition both cars have been ‘dominant’ at various points in the season, it’s just that conveniently it’s never applied the other way round by those so eager to try and push this narrative in a single direction.
I don’t think either car has been dominant all season. I think RBR were quicker- markedly in some races- until Silverstone (and actually had the closest thing to a ‘dominant’ car in Austria.) Since Silverstone Mercedes has been quicker but somewhat hampered/nullified by the weather and some poor strategy calls so not able to take advantage of it.
Here's Shovlin's view for the rest of the season:
So it seems Shovlin feels Mercedes now has the better package. It makes the Pirelli debacle all the more disappointing considering Max suffered a DNF due to a tire issue and now Mercedes have apparently benefited from the new construction. It also makes Bottas incident where he essentially destroyed both Red Bulls in Hungary all the more decisive for both championships. Mercedes may now have the upper hand in outright pace but there are still question marks over whether or not they can keep the wick up without compromising reliability.“It looks like a car that can win championships,” said Shovlin. “If you go back to the early part of the year, decisions that we’re taking on development, trying to balance the two years [2021 and 2022], one of our worries was at this end of the year, are we still going to be able to stick the car on pole, to get a front row lock out, to control a race?
“And it’s really reassuring that we are now getting into the last six, that we’ve shown we’ve got a package that can out-qualify [Red Bull] on a Saturday and out-race them on a Sunday.”
