How are the top four doing this season? Ferrari on top, Red Bull in trouble, what about Mercedes and McLaren?

Entering a new era has been very difficult for each team for many reasons. However, at the moment, Ferrari has done the best of all, currently dominating both the Drivers’ Championship and the Constructors’ Cup. How are the other top three teams doing?

Formula 1 has had its opening three races of the new season, which not only showed how the top four teams are spread out, but also gave an indication of what the next few races could look like at least.

Scuderia Ferrari

Pole position, victory, fastest lap of the race, leader in all 58 laps of the Australian Grand Prix and best driver of the day. Monaco’s Leclerc clearly dominated the Australian Grand Prix, proving that Ferrari is very much on a roll.

With 104 points, the Italian stable leads the Constructors’ Cup standings, having a lead of almost 40 points over second-placed Mercedes. Also Leclerc has already leapfrogged second-placed Russell in the drivers’ championship by a margin of thirty-four points.

It should be noted, if it hadn’t been for the huge bad luck in qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix that Leclerc’s teammate Carlos Sainz encountered, things might have looked a little better for Ferrari. But that’s something we’ll never know anyway.

Yes, Ferrari had the highest porpoising figures on the Melbourne circuit according to telemetry, but even so, the cars of F1’s current top team are performing absolutely brilliantly.

Plus, as McLaren boss Zak Brown said – porpoising isn’t necessarily bad. He noted that some teams are even gaining performance thanks to it. Could this be the case for Ferrari? Apparently so.

What’s also worth noting, however, is the fact that Ferrari has recorded great performances both on the fast Saudi Arabian circuit and on the more technically demanding track, which is undoubtedly the one in Melbourne after various modifications.

But the fact remains that we are currently about ten percent of the way through this season and a lot can still change. However, so far it looks like Ferrari has managed to put together some truly successful monoblocs that have no major weaknesses.

Red Bull Racing

The fact remains that Verstappen is Leclerc’s closest challenger in the title fight. This is despite the fact that despite winning in Saudi Arabia, Verstappen has failed to see the finish line twice in the opening three races of this season.

In a recent interview, it was Max Verstappen who complained about the reliability of his car, as a result of which he is not even currently thinking about defending his title from last year.

Although Red Bull, along with Ferrari, is conceptually the best car to be found in the grid, the reliability issues, specifically with the fuel system, is something that the team’s engineers need to resolve as soon as possible.

As the official F1 website also reports, Red Bull still hasn’t found the optimum balance when it comes to tyre work either. This is both in qualifying and race pace, where Red Bull has always been very strong.

However, at Albert Park in particular, Verstappen struggled a lot with the degradation of the left front tyre. Above all, however, the problems with the fuel system and therefore the reliability of the car are responsible for Red Bull’s current third place in the Constructors’ Cup behind Ferrari and Mercedes.

It’s also a bad sign that Verstappen’s monocoque caught fire in Australia. That’s what set alarm bells ringing in Milton Keynes. But there is plenty of time before the fourth race of the season at Imola. Let’s see what the Red Bull engineers can come up with in the meantime.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1

We wrote more about Mercedes after the Australian Grand Prix. It should be noted, their engineers still haven’t found a recipe for how to not only eliminate such massive porpoising, but how not to deal with it at least in the corners.

Only Haas and Ferrari have more problems with this after-effect. Why in quotes? Although according to telemetry, Ferrari was the worst of all, Mercedes is perhaps the only team besides Aston Martin that struggles with this rocking in corners.

Because of this, Mercedes drivers have to ease off the throttle before the braking point of the corner itself, losing valuable time. In addition, Lewis Hamilton in particular is still struggling with some significant understeer and has complained several times over the opening three race weekends not only about the poor set-up of the car, but also its handling.

So what is the solution? A performance boost, albeit a rather temporary solution. If Mercedes wants to attack another Constructors’ Cup title and Hamilton wants an eighth world title, this is not the way Mercedes should go.

After all, as Toto Wolff said before the race weekend in Australia, Mercedes engineers have not yet come up with any miracle solution.

McLaren Racing

At the pre-season tests in Barcelona, it looked like McLaren would take on the top three stables from the start of the 2022 season, putting up a healthy fight with Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull.

But then came the tests in Bahrain, where Daniel Ricciardo didn’t test at all due to illness, and McLaren’s car gradually developed various problems. However, no one among the fans or experts expected that the first race of the new season would end in disaster for the Woking team.

Lando Norris crossed the finish line in fifteenth place, while Australian Ricciardo finished fourteenth. The 22-year-old McLaren driver even commented afterwards that there were a number of problems with the MCL36 and that this season could end in a major disaster.

Poor performance, brake cooling problems and the associated lack of downforce and understeer in the car – that’s a list of the most serious issues that have plagued McLaren in the opening round of this season.

But then came the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, in which Norris lost sixth place at the very end. His seventh place finish, however, gave fans some hope that work was being done to fix the problems, and quickly. Although Ricciardo did not finish the race due to technical difficulties.

However, the Australian Grand Prix brought even more hope, and not just for McLaren fans. It was at the Melbourne circuit that McLaren was most likely able to get back on track and fix some of the problems.

The question is whether McLaren can turn these temporary solutions to their problems into permanent ones. It should be noted, on paper, both of this team’s cars were on average performing better than the Mercedes monoblocs.

The British stable also managed to eliminate the porpoising problems again a little more, and the downforce of both cars was also evident in Australia. According to the detailed telemetry, McLaren is just the best of the four teams in terms of porpoising.

However, the opening three races of this season, as Formula 1 enters a new era, have suggested that each team is likely to be suited to a different circuit configuration.

Sources