Two weekends ago, Mercedes-AMG Petronas team has clenched another Formula 1 Constructor’s Championship at the Japanese Grand Prix held at Suzuka International Racing Course, the team’s third consecutive championship win with a considerable margin between its strongest contenders Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari. Winning the Constructor’s Championship is considered as one of the most prestigious achievement in racing, and it was yet another testimony to Mercedes’ engineering ability to build a durable and effective ultra-high- powertrains and extremely competitive chassis (the bits that let these racing cars handle like they’re on rails), and just how much of a powerhouse Mercedes-Benz is in automotive technology. It’s an achievement comparable to winning the World Cup, or the Super Bowl. But as developmental stage for the 2017 season looms around the corner, and with all the talks from rest of the grid, I can’t help but to think that this might be the end of Mercedes-AMG’s dominance in Formula 1.
Their first challenge is the sheer number of competitors that it must face. Compared to many teams on the grid, Mercedes is a factory team, directly funded by Mercedes-Benz, the biggest name in the auto business, giving them a huge advantage compared to the privately funded teams. However, other factory teams like Red Bull, Ferrari, Renault Sport and McLaren-Honda have now been pouring millions of dollars and some of the world’s biggest brains into development for three years now, for the sole purpose of knocking the Three-Pointed Star off the throne of Formula 1. As if that wasn’t enough to be nervous about, the German team also has to worry about its own partners, to whom it supplies its dominant power units (which is F1 speak for the engine and hybrid system) to Sahara Force India and Williams-Martini Racing, both of which have been competing in Formula 1 years before Mercedes-AMG team was even conceived, and are perfectly capable of building a car capable of posing as a serious threat to Mercedes; the latter has 9 Constructor’s Championships under its belt, after all.
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One of the many reasons why Mercedes had been such a dominator in the sport was because they had begun development on the current-regulation 1.6 liter V6 hybrid powertrain years before they were mandated for the 2014 season, meaning it was already ahead by a considerable margin in terms of development while everybody else was beginning with a clean slate and was struggling to catch up. Other teams could build extremely capable chassis that could handle just as well as the Mercedes cars through the corners, but often than not, it was their power units that was lacking compared to the monsters of the Silver Arrows. However, by the beginning of the 2017 season, the current V6 hybrids would’ve been in use for four seasons, meaning everyone else now have three years’ worth of data. Rival teams of Mercedes like Ferrari, Red Bull and even McLaren from nowhere are already confident that they have finally got their sh*t together, and promises that next year's contention for the Constructor's Championship will be much closer than this year's.
But the biggest factor, by a gargantuan margin is the new 2017 regulations. 2017 sees a dramatic overhaul in chassis design, such as lower and wider rear wings, fatter tires, wider track dimensions and loads of other changes that is going to make the cars about five seconds faster than the current ones, and difference of five seconds--in any types of racing--is normal world’s equivalent to about…three years. A change like this will surely rock the floor for every team in the F1 paddock, and unlike the engine regulations of 2014, this rule was submitted—collectively—by the teams, meaning Mercedes doesn’t have any more or any less headway when it comes to the new design regulations. With Mercedes already conceding multiple grand prix wins to Red Bull this year and with Ferrari often right on the exhaust pipes of their cars (albeit with some terrible strategy mistakes in Japan and such), there are already signs that next year’s Constructor’s Championship will be much, much harder to defend for Mercedes.
However, there is a real chance that this speculation was made from serious underestimation of the powerhouse that is Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team. Perhaps they might actually pull off winning four consecutive Constructor’s Championship, something that only four out of 11 current-participating teams have done, a remarkable achievement for such a young team. Just like their competitors, Mercedes isn’t going to sit still, they are going to keep improving themselves and set the bar out further to protect their champion status. Maybe, just maybe, Mercedes will go so far as reaching or even breaking Ferrari’s record of six consecutive Constructor’s Championship that the Italian team achieved from 1999 to 2004. In all truth, the only that can tell us the answer is time, and see if Mercedes and its two awesome drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg can make another fantastic year and pull of the quadruple Formula 1 Constructor’s Championship. As a fan, I will be watching. Next year is going to be good.
