Formula 1: Mercedes’ start to 2019 season not as dominant as it seems

Mercedes have started out the 2019 Formula 1 season in dominant fashion. But their start to the season hasn’t been as dominant as it has seemed to be.

Mercedes-AMG Petronas Motorsport’s Lewis Hamilton opened up the 2019 Formula 1 season by taking the pole position ahead of teammate Valtteri Bottas for the Australian Grand Prix. From second place, Bottas ended up passing Hamilton at the start of the race and going on to dominate the race. Hamilton, meanwhile, finished in a comfortable second.

Hamilton won the season’s second race, the Bahrain Grand Prix, ahead of Bottas in a comfortable second place, and after Mercedes’ second front row lockout of the season for the season’s third race, the Chinese Grand Prix, he took the lead from Bottas at the start and went on to lead every lap. Bottas finished in a comfortable second once again.

As a result, the Brackley-based team became the first team to open up a season with three consecutive 1-2 finishes since Williams did so to open up the 1992 season. A fourth consecutive 1-2 finish to open up the 2019 season would put the Silver Arrows in a league of their own, as this feat has never been accomplished by any team in Formula 1 history.

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But while Mercedes are the clear top team in Formula 1, as they should be considering the fact that they have dominated the V6 turbo hybrid era since it began in the 2014 season by winning five consecutive constructor championships as well as five driver constructor championships, their hot start to the 2019 season has not been as dominant as it has seemed to be.

Yes, they recorded 1-2 finishes in the season’s first and third races after locking out the front row on the starting grid for both of them, and nobody else really had a change to break into the top two in either one of these two races.

But the season’s second race resulted in a 1-2 finish effectively being gifted to them by Scuderia Ferrari, which easily could have recorded their own 1-2 finish had things not gone completely awry for them.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc started the race from the pole position and quickly fell behind teammate Sebastian Vettel and Bottas. But he battled back from third and took second place back from Bottas before taking the lead back from Vettel only a few laps later. From that point forward, he dominated the race.

Meanwhile, after Hamilton passed Vettel for second place with 20 laps remaining in the 37-lap race, the 31-year-old German spun out and damaged his car, causing him to make an unscheduled pit stop that ended up relegating him to a fifth place finish.

Then with only 10 laps remaining in the race, Leclerc’s engine experienced a major issue that cost him a ton of time. His lead over Hamilton in second place, which was over 10 seconds at the time, evaporated, and the 34-year-old Briton went on to take the lead. Meanwhile, Bottas proceeded to take second place away from the 21-year-old Monegasque, who ultimately finished in third.

In a perfect world, Mercedes would have recorded two 1-2 finishes through the 2019 Formula 1 season’s first three races as opposed to three, and Ferrari would have recorded a 1-3 finish if not a 1-2 finish in the race that Mercedes would not have.

So while Mercedes have been dominant so far this season, it isn’t like they have been completely untouchable like a lot of people seem to think. They entered the season having won 74 of the 100 races that had been contested since the start of the 2014 season, and they have been the strongest team in two of the first three in 2019, which is right around what is expected of them, nothing more.