Mark Hughes: The stories of Mercedes and Red Bull should not be compared

Mark Hughes, an expert from The Race, believes that there is no point in drawing parallels when comparing different periods in the history of Mercedes and Red Bull Racing, as the periods of dominance of these teams ended for different reasons..

James Allison’s contract at Mercedes has been extended, he remains technical director while assuring that he is happy to work with the team at a time when it is trying to return to previous levels.

“It’s actually a lot of fun,” Ellison said. – Although it’s not as fun as winning, that’s for sure. But you have to love Formula 1 as a whole, and that means you have to face it when you don’t give your best.

Red Bull is performing impressively at the moment and one of the things I admire about this team is that they have continued to work hard over a long period of little success and are now enjoying the fruits of their efforts.

It is also very interesting to be in a position to catch up if the team is confident that it is taking the right steps to regain its previous status…”

Ellison, comparing the two teams, seems to make the point that a long period of winning is inevitably followed by a decline, when the energy that recently helped achieve success dries up, at which point the next cycle begins.

This is fully confirmed by another example: once Ferrari dominated the championship and achieved unprecedented success, but then the period of dominance of the team from Maranello ended when the energy that had recently allowed them to win began to wane. Soon Michael Schumacher, Ross Brawn and Jean Todt left the team, and all the Ferrari magic disappeared somewhere and new stars shone in Formula 1.

However, if you compare Mercedes and Red Bull, it becomes clear that the circumstances in their history were completely different.

Red Bull Racing dominated the championship before the ‘hybrid era’ started in Formula 1: until 2014, the team won four seasons in a row together with Sebastian Vettel. But this period did not end because the energy that fueled Red Bull gradually dried up – it ended immediately as soon as the championship teams switched to new-generation power plants.

Of course, the aerodynamics factor still played a big role, but if the difference between a really efficient chassis and an ordinary good one was 0.5 seconds, then the differences in lap times due to the power of the power plants were two. , if not more, three times more.

Red Bull’s cars were powered by Renault engines, and French motorists clearly underestimated the complexity of the task when Formula 1 switched to hybrid power plants. Mercedes, on the other hand, had invested hundreds of millions of euros in this project, developing and improving the PU106 engine over several years, and was best prepared for the new challenges.

With the transition to hybrid power plants in the championship, the balance of power immediately changed. The Mercedes team, led at the time by the most experienced and cunning Ross Brawn, made the most of the opportunities that presented themselves and used the industrial strength of the Stuttgart group for this purpose.

And Red Bull Racing is a great racing team, but it has never had such technological resources. It did not lose its ambitions, but it was unrealistic to compete with Mercedes, which has its own engine production and not very efficient Renault power plants. We can say that in technological terms Mercedes was then five years ahead of everyone else.

In addition, Mercedes had many more opportunities to achieve perfect integration of power units and chassis – the team from Brackley and the mechanics from Brixworth worked well together.

Red Bull’s cars were still aerodynamically efficient, but this was not enough to compensate for the lack of power from the Renault engines.

But gradually changes occurred in Formula 1 – in 2017 new rules came into force, which were gradually adjusted and supplemented, and by 2021 the balance of power became different. Adjustments to regulations regarding the underbody of cars affected the efficiency of the Mercedes chassis, while Red Bull collaborated for the third year with Honda mechanics, who by then had learned to build excellent power plants that in no way were inferior to engines from other manufacturers.

And then Mercedes started having problems, which only got worse with the next change in regulations. When Formula 1 returned to ground effect, it turned out that the chassis built in Brackley was not as good as the chassis made in Milton Keynes under Adrian Newey.

James Allison thinks that Mercedes can finally close the gap in 2024, but he obviously does not yet know what Red Bull Racing has managed to achieve. However, it will be all the more interesting to see their rivalry.

However, the technical director of Mercedes is a professional with extensive experience and knows very well the laws according to which development in Formula 1 takes place: “You cannot expect that progress will be linear or close to it. After a period of high expectations, the racing gods give you a strip down, after which you have to regain your strength and make another attempt.

I hope we now progress quickly and with confidence, and it will be very interesting to see what we can achieve against our rivals.”