How is Hamilton so far ahead of everybody else?
Because he has the best car.
And the best tyres.
And the best team.
And he is in the best form of his life.
Last weekend at the French Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton won his sixth race of the season. And we have had only eight races so far.
With him in command and with Valtteri Bottas winning the other two, Mercedes have now won all the races so far. In fact, the Silver Arrows have been so dominant lately that if they win the Austrian Grand Prix next, they would have broken the record of the most successive Grand Prix wins, in Formula One history.
Mercedes’s supremacy this season has been confounding, to say the least. It has fundamentally come down to the German team adapting quickly to aerodynamic changes and tyre construction over the winter, but there is so much more to the story than that. Despite having a lower engine performance than Ferrari, Mercedes has managed to outwit them and engineer their cars to match the 2018 regulations without losing their competitive edge.
Where has Ferrari been?
It has been a dismal season for Ferrari and it keeps getting worse. They are a mammoth 140 points behind Mercedes in the Constructors Standings, with Red Bull, a further 61 points behind. The Italians have failed miserably in adapting to the new regulations, which has cost them heavily this season.
Despite constantly updating the car, team principal Mattia Binotto is still yet to see any real progress. He said, "I don't think we've got all the answers from this weekend because the floor was not working properly and somehow there is a lack of answers. We will still work on that one. He added, "I think we'll have some test items again [at the next round] in Austria, to try and better understand. I think we will fully understand normally when all the parts fully work as expected."
Is an upset possible?
Not unless we have a miracle.
Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes look unstoppable right now, with the racer hitting his peak form and the team having assimilated a car as close to perfection as well. In fact, so brutal was the Englishman’s victory at the La Castellet that he won the race by a full 18 seconds ahead of Bottas, which is a record of sorts in itself. It was a terrible race for the fan and the viewer, but one that is most likely to repeat itself throughout the season until Hamilton wraps up the title by the Monza Grand Prix.
