Is Mercedes the most successful team ever?
Yesterday Mercedes won their 5th consecutive Formula 1 constructors title (2014-2018). They are the second constructor to achieve this amazing performance, but how do they compare to Ferrari who also won 5 constructor championships in a row.
Ferrari was the first team that achieved this level of performance. They even scored six constructor titles from 1999 to 2004. In 1999 with Micheal Schumacher & Eddie Irvine and from 2000 till 2004 with Michael Schumacher & Rubens Barrichello as drivers pair.
When you compare the best seasons (2000-2004) of Ferrari with Mercedes (2013-2018) during the 5 championships they both won the constructors title in, you get the following graph:
The graph represents the following data: Ferrari drove 85 races in their 5 season they won the title in against 99 for Mercedes. We divided the amount of wins, 2nd places, 3rd places, poles and fastest laps by the amount of total races of each season and calculated the average % of those 5 seasons.
From this graph you can see that Mercedes even outperformed Ferrari with a staggering 73% race wins and 84% pole positions. The only figure Ferrari was better in was 3rd places, but with 2 drivers competing that's a disadvantage. The numbers will even rise, because Mercedes still have one race to go in 2018.
Ferrari had the same drivers during their successful period; Michael Schumacher & Rubens Barrichello. Mercedes had 2 different driver pairs during their 5 seasons; Lewis Hamilton & Nico Rosberg and Lewis Hamilton & Valtteri Bottas. When you 'zoom-in' to the figures of each season for Mercedes you get the following graph:
In this graph you can see a big difference between the season were Nico Rosberg was still driving for Mercedes. There most successful season until now was by far 2016. If Hamilton and Rosberg would not have crashed in Spain they even would have better figures.
In 2017 and 2018 Valtteri Bottas replaced Rosberg, who decided to quit when he won the 2016 driver title. Looking at these figures you can see this had a huge impact on the overall performance of Mercedes. This 2018 season Bottas even didn't win a single race yet, while Hamilton won 10 races.
Whether or not it's the right decision to keep Bottas for 2019 is yet to be seen. According the figures the performance of Mercedes has declined a lot after Rosberg left. The reason for this could be that he caused a much bigger rivalry between him and Hamilton, which seems to be very good for the overall team performance.
Ferrari won 6 consecutive constructor titles (1999-2004) so should be called the best team in history, but Mercedes will probably have a good one again next 2019 F1 season and could equal Ferrari's 6 titles.
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I do not support Mercedes. so it no interest to me.
Why?
Mercedes has been strong since 2014 as they reacted to the massive rule changes extremely well. They enjoyed comprehensive dominance until 2016. In 2017 and especially in 2018 Ferrari has finally been able to catch up with Mercedes, thus flattened their ridiculously overpowered statistics. I think it's shortsighted to assume that the retirement of Rosberg and signing of Bottas would have that kind of impact. It would be like saying that Ferrari doubled their points from 2014 to 2015 by kicking out Alonso and signing up Vettel in 2015.
Arguably Rosberg is better than Bottas, but the main reason for the lowered statistics lies on the rising of Ferrari (and in some instances of RB) and Mercedes losing its superiority. And no, the superiority of Mercedes wasn't because of the rivalry between team mates, but because of the team who got their car together perfectly aligned with the new rules in 2014. Anyone in that grid would've won the championship between 2014 and 2016 with that car. I would even argue to the contrary on the rivalry. The rivalry might have led to the losing of Mercedes' superiority as the information sharing and the unity within the team partly scattered in 2016 which surely harmed the development of 2017 car. Furthermore, since the rivalry ended, Hamilton has topped his game to a level he was never even close with Rosberg. What comes to the most successful team of all time, Mercedes most likely was it between 2014 and 2016. Now in 2017 and 2018 they have continued their success as it seems they have awaken a true driving legend within their ranks.
Dear Peter, thank you for your comments and insights.
Of course Ferrari got much stronger and performs much better since the high downforce era, but when you only compare Bottas with Rosberg at Mercedes you can't hide the fact that Rosberg performed much better than Bottas until now. Rosberg' victory score was 34% from 2014-16 and his pole score was even 44%, while Bottas' victory score is 8% and his pole score is only 15%.
I recon that If Rosberg would not have left the building, the statistics of Mercedes would be much better in 2017 & 18 than they are now and Ferrari would have a much tougher contender than they have now.
In 2016 Rosberg's performance was very close to the performance of Hamilton. Number of victories H/R was 10/9 and poles were 12/8.
Ferrari won 6 constructors in a row, 1999-2004 and if they had so may races at every yeap noone will much Schumacher records.
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