2019 Spanish GP Review

What a dull season eh?

Well this season is turning out all a bit dull isn't it? Perhaps we had too much of a good thing the last couple of seasons with a competitive Ferrari. Pre-season promised much, the hope of a titanic battle at the front was looking good, and five races in, Mercedes have utterly dominated, with perfect one-two finishes in all of them. The on-track action, or rather the lack of it, is sadly not very entertaining. But this is sport, not entertainment; the best teams deserve to win, this is not WWE's entertainment drivern scripted drama. Spain has traditionally been a boring race, though we have had some excitement in recent years, and with Monaco which even more boring traditionally, the racing product isn't going to get much better soon. Liberty have done good work in getting eyes on the sport, particularly through the Netflix series, but we hope dull racing doesn't turn people back off it again. But we have to give credit where credit is due, and Mercedes and its drivers are delivering the goods at the moment, kudos to them.

Qualifying - an insight into Mercedes dominance

Qualifying was a bit weird in that nobody improved on their second Q3 lap with the changing track conditions, so it was all down to their first banker laps. Hamilton didn't have a charged battery and  was scruffy throughout his lap and Bottas has beat the Englishman three times in a row now in qualifying. It didn't matter, because Mercedes advantage over the rest of the field was so large that Hamilton could qualify 6 tenths behind the pace and still be a comfortable distance ahead of Vettel in third place.

I love these qualifying side by side videos, and in particular the live gap monitor in the middle. You can see Ferrari are losing so much time in the slow corners, the largest part of their deficit being in the final sector - which doesn't bode well at all for Monaco. Part of that was because they gambled on a car that would be quick on the straights, which they had a clear advantage, being up 2 tenths at the end of the first sector.

The gamble nearly paid off with a great run to the first corner, but being on the outside, he was only ever going to hope to be a distraction rather than a credible threat there. In the end, he ran Leclerc wide, not for the first time this year, and then was passed clean around the outside by Max Verstappen.

How the teams fared

What a great weekend Verstappen had, beating off both Ferrari's. It was nice to see Gasly fairing well in some wheel-to-wheel action, but he still has his work cut out to get close to Max.

Haas had a much better weekend, and if it hadn't have been for Grosjean dropping down the field after the safety car period, they were looking convincingly like the fourth best car out there. Both cars finished in the points which is good news. Even Gunther Steiner made light of his cars touching in the race saying it made a boring race lively for a moment.

Alfa Romeo on the other hand struggled. Not even in the safe pair of hands of Raikkonen could they get any points, with the Finn going wide on the first lap losing a number of places.

Renault also struggled again and they can't be pleased with how slow the car is at the moment.

Toro Rosso enjoyed a good weekend. Kvyat has got into Q3 convincingly in the last two races, and unlike the last race, had a pretty good race too with some good overtakes after a botched pitstop under the safety car. Though Albon has been pretty good this season, he was shown the way by his more experienced team-mate in Spain.

McLaren salvaged points when they didn't have the pace to. Though Sainz was beaten by a teammate for the first time in Spain, thanks to Lando's tangle with Stroll, Sainz was able to finish strongly in the points, to which Sainz tweeted Lando, 'I owe you a safety car'.

The Racing Points also struggled, whilst there was some nice action going on with the Williams at the back. Kubica was being told to change some settings and was surprised when Russell came from along way back to overtake his teammate into turn 1.

We're missing out on viewing some of the midfield action, that's always been a complaint about the F1 coverage, but it was getting better at one stage. Back in Bernie's days, the leading teams were promised a certain amount of screentime, one wonders if that's still the case, but the TV directors need to focus on where the action is rather that us finding out a few days later on Youtube.

What's next?

Hamilton's great starts of late have been a difference maker. He now heads the championship, a whopping 46 points ahead of Verstappen in third, and he has the best car and the best team, it's looking like Championship number 6 and it looks like not even Bottas with a beard can do anything about it, and I'm saying this around a quarter of the way through the season.

Mercedes front wing concept and general car philosophy seems to have more development potential whilst Ferrari's were quick out of the blocks. Binotto hinted their team may have gone down the wrong development route when highlighting a lack of downforce and understeer as the reason for the SF71's deficit, whilst Wolff has admitted they played the long game with their front wing philosophy.

Can this Mercedes be the most dominant Mercedes ever? Can this Mercedes be the most victorious car in F1 ever, perhaps beating even the McLaren MP4/4? F1 can change very quickly, and if Ferrari scored 5 one-two's in the next quarter of the season, we'd be talking a different story, but at the moment, that doesn't seem very likely at all.