Power Ranking the Formula 1 Teams After 2014 Japanese Grand Prix
The 2014 Japanese Grand Prix ended with a Mercedes one-two, but it wasn't all plain sailing for the German constructor.
For the first time this year, a car with identical compound tyres of a similar age was genuinely quicker than either Mercedes for a sustained period of time.
Two cars, actually. On Lap 19, Sebastian Vettel was 33 seconds behind race leader Nico Rosberg. By Lap 28, the gap was 24 seconds.
Daniel Ricciardo, who had been following in Vettel's wheel tracks during that period, then closed the gap to new leader Lewis Hamilton to 18 seconds by Lap 34.
Had they not lost so much time behind the Williams duo early on, Red Bull may have been able to duke it out with at least one Mercedes on pure pace alone.
But unless we have another very wet race, it's unlikely to happen again this year. The Silver Arrows were 1.5 seconds per lap quicker than the Bulls in Saturday's qualifying session.
Williams might have been their closest challengers had it stayed dry.
Elsewhere, Force India were strong in the race but poor in qualifying, McLaren looked a little stronger and Toro Rosso could be set for a good end to the year.
Looking at reliability, qualifying and race pace, here's how the teams currently rank.
11. Caterham
1 of 11
No Change
One side of the Caterham garage never really got going in Suzuka. After reserve driver Roberto Merhi's brief cameo in his car for first practice, Kamui Kobayashi crashed on only his fourth lap in the second session.
He went on to qualify 21st, while team-mate Marcus Ericsson was 19th.
Ericsson's embarrassing spin behind the safety car dropped him to the back of the pack, but throughout the rest of the race his pace was good. It could well have been his best performance in F1.
He finished up in 17th, the best of the back-markers.
Kobayashi had a poor race to go with a disappointing qualifying. He finished last, the 19th and final classified driver.
It's looking very close between Caterham and Marussia, and the green guys were indeed the better in the wet.
But dry pace is by far the greatest factor in these rankings, and I'd still say Marussia have the slightest edge there.
Caterham remain 11th for now.
10. Marussia
2 of 11
No Change
The Japanese Grand Prix weekend was the darkest in Marussia's short history.
Qualifying was average; Jules Bianchi lined up 20th with a time one-tenth shy of Caterham's Marcus Ericsson, while Max Chilton was 22nd and last. The Brit's best time was half a second down on his team-mate.
Bianchi was the quicker in the race too, until the terrible accident on his 42nd lap.
Chilton was the 18th of 19 classified finishers.
Marussia stay 10th.
9. Lotus
3 of 11
No Change
Lotus had a miserable start to their weekend. Both drivers were eliminated in Q1 for the second time in three races.
Pastor Maldonado was the quicker of the two, with a best lap of 1 minute, 35.917 seconds for 17th on the grid. Romain Grosjean was less than a tenth behind in 18th.
Both made up places after the first round of stops, and for periods at least their wet-weather pace was a little better than their speed in the dry.
But by the end, it was another disappointing result.
Maldonado, who might have finished as high as 11th without his unfortunately timed final stop, was 16th. Grosjean was one place higher in 15th.
Lotus remain ninth, and aren't likely to improve before the end of the year.
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8. Sauber
4 of 11
No Change
Sauber continued to chase their first point of the year in Japan, but even the chaotic weather couldn't help them to a Top 10 finish.
In qualifying, they occupied a very lonely eighth row, comfortably ahead of Lotus but in no danger of upsetting the quicker cars ahead. Adrian Sutil's 1:35.364 was the best time achieved by a C33 on Saturday, with Esteban Gutierrez three tenths behind.
After the first round of stops they were 12th (Sutil) and 14th (Gutierrez), and as various drivers used different strategies they found themselves racing all manner of cars.
Force Indias, Toro Rossos, the Lotus pairing and a Ferrari all shared track time with the Saubers, but the Swiss cars were nearly always on the losing end of such battles.
Sutil's race ended with a spin on his 41st lap, while Gutierrez came home in 13th.
Sauber remain eighth.
7. Force India
5 of 11
Down One
We come now to a very close contest. Force India ended up with a decent result after good wet-weather performances from both drivers, but their qualifying performance is really starting to hurt them.
Sergio Perez led the way with 11th on the grid. Nico Hulkenberg was 14th.
The German made great gains at the first round of stops, emerging in eighth. He closed an eight-second gap to the Williams pair ahead in just five laps, but was unable to get by.
He was classified in eighth at the end.
Perez was less fortunate in the stops, but when in clean air he didn't seem much slower than Hulkenberg. He finished ninth, a little over 15 seconds behind his-team-mate.
Their downfall at the moment is qualifying. Both could and should have scored more points, but poor starting positions left them with too much to do. Hulkenberg's average grid slot at the last four races is 14.75, while Perez's is 12.5.
Good in the wet, but dry pace counts for more.
In their extremely tight battle with Toro Rosso, Force India drop one spot to seventh.
6. Toro Rosso
6 of 11
Up One
Suzuka is a circuit on which pure power is very useful, so Toro Rosso will have been buoyed by their qualifying display.
Jean-Eric Vergne set the 11th-fastest time, missed out on a spot in Q3 by exactly two tenths of a second. The man he was two tenths slower than? Sebastian Vettel, driving a proper Red Bull.
Unfortunately, the Frenchman was forced to change his engine before qualifying, took a 10-place grid penalty and lined up 20th.
Daniil Kvyat was a further tenth down in 13th—his worst qualifying result since Canada.
After a brief tussle with Kimi Raikkonen after the first round of stops (which he won at the second round), the Russian spent the rest of his afternoon battling Sergio Perez.
He kept the Force India behind and looked set for a good points finish—but an unfortunately timed late stop dropped him down to 11th.
Vergne was up to 15th after the first round of stops, but did a very short second stint and returned to 20th. From there he progressed to 11th, and got a lucky break as other drivers stopped just before the late safety car and red flag.
He finished ninth, adding two points to his tally.
The results say Force India were better, but they had broadly equal pace—and on a dry track I get the feeling the Toros are stronger. Given they have a Renault engine, the STR9 must be a very decent chassis.
Toro Rosso move up to sixth.
5. McLaren
7 of 11
No Change
With McLaren's 2015 driver lineup still unknown, Jenson Button's F1 future is in doubt. But if this race was any kind of an audition, he passed with flying colours.
Kevin Magnussen was the team's man of the day on Saturday. He qualified seventh, with Button in eighth.
But once the race got going, Magnussen went backwards. Though he came out of the first round of stops in eighth, an electrical issue forced him back to the pit lane after just four laps for a new steering wheel.
That left him last, and effectively out of the points battle. He gradually moved back through the field, and at one point un-lapped himself from Daniel Ricciardo with a quite lovely move around the outside of Turn 2.
He ended up 14th.
Button had a very different experience in Suzuka. He (along with Pastor Maldonado) stopped two laps earlier than anyone else for intermediate tyres as soon as the safety car came in.
He sped around several seconds per lap quicker than the cars he was racing, and when everyone else had made their stops, Button was up to third.
He remained there until two-thirds race distance, when the quicker Red Bulls eventually caught up.
Sebastian Vettel jumped him at the second set of stops, and though Button defended well against Daniel Ricciardo, he eventually lost out and decided to pit for full wets.
He had enough of a gap to exit from the pit lane without losing fifth, and he remained there until the race ended two laps later.
McLaren are in their own little world—well clear of the cars behind, but seemingly unable to match those ahead.
They remain fifth.
4. Ferrari
8 of 11
No Change
Ferrari went into the weekend knowing for sure that arguably their greatest asset, Fernando Alonso, was leaving for pastures new in 2015.
The Spaniard qualified in his customary fifth place, his best lap 1.2 seconds down on pole. Kimi Raikkonen started 10th.
There's an old saying, that one can wait a long, long time for a bus, then two will turn up at once. Before his car broke down in Italy two races ago, Alonso hadn't suffered a race-ending mechanical failure since 2010.
But after completing just two laps behind the safety car, along came his second failure in three races. His car coasted to a halt with an electronics failure, and his race was over.
Raikkonen, left to carry the Ferrari flag into battle, didn't fare well. He never appeared likely to better his grid slot, and spent much of the race battling cars which should really have been slower (at least, in the dry).
He finished 12th, and Ferrari's quite staggering 81-race streak of having at least one car in the points came to an end.
They remain fourth.
3. Williams
9 of 11
No Change
To borrow one of football's most cherished cliches, it was very much a game of two halves for Williams.
Valtteri Bottas was simply mighty in qualifying. His Williams car doesn't have the performance of the Mercedes, and it looked like the gap from them to the best of the rest would be at least a second.
Bottas got round in a time six-tenths shy of pole to claim third, with team-mate Felipe Massa four-tenths further back in fourth.
But their car isn't very good in the wet, and when the safety car peeled in on Sunday it showed. The race was no longer for a podium—it was about damage limitation.
After just three green-flag laps, the Mercedes duo were 20 seconds clear of Massa (Bottas had stopped the lap before).
They lost places to the Red Bulls and Jenson Button, and settled in to sixth and seventh, lapping within a few seconds of each other. The gap to the leaders steadily grew, and Massa was forced to defend against a charging Nico Hulkenberg for much of the early going.
The German got ahead of both after their second stops, but he stopped again late on and promoted the Williams cars back to sixth and seventh.
They finished there, almost two minutes down on Lewis Hamilton, but will be happy to have extended their constructors' championship lead over Ferrari.
Williams remain second.
2. Red Bull
10 of 11
No Change
Red Bull lumped everything on a wet race, and could well have done better than third and fourth.
Running more wing than usual in anticipation of rain on Sunday, they didn't qualify well. Daniel Ricciardo was sixth, a second and a half down on the pole time, with Sebastian Vettel four-tenths further back in ninth.
The early pit stop melee saw Vettel pass Ricciardo and a few others to move up to sixth. Ricciardo won't have been happy to fall back to seventh.
Both got past the Williams pairing very quickly. Vettel went first, using the inside and outside methods at the hairpin, while Ricciardo preferred to pass both in less-conventional fashion. His move on Bottas was especially good to watch.
Then something unusual happened. They began to catch Mercedes, with both now over half a minute up the road.
Unfortunately for them, the gap was too great, and they had to settle for attacking Jenson Button. Vettel got through in the second round of stops, and Ricciardo eventually took fourth after a number of attempts.
They finished in those positions, Vettel scoring his second consecutive podium.
Red Bull stay second.
1. Mercedes
11 of 11
No Change
Chaos reigned in Suzuka, but the end result was still a Mercedes one-two.
Nico Rosberg seized the initiative in qualifying, beating Lewis Hamilton to pole by two tenths of a second. Their closest rival, Valtteri Bottas in the Williams, was four tenths down on Hamilton's time.
The two W05s pulled out a huge lead once the safety car came in. After just three laps, they were 20 seconds clear of the third-placed Williams of Felipe Massa, who was finding his car unsuited to the conditions.
They stopped later than everyone else, and emerged well clear of the field. But it soon became apparent the quicker Mercedes wasn't ahead. The Red Bulls were going over a second per lap quicker.
At the beginning of the 29th lap, something happened that hadn't occurred all year. One healthy Mercedes passed the other and made the move stick without either car leaving the track and without any form of contact.
Hamilton proceeded to pull away, and was comfortably ahead when the safety car emerged.
Rosberg finished second, securing the team's eighth one-two of the year.
Mercedes remain firmly on top.
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