Formula 1: How Mercedes’ dominance led to a historic upset

The dominance of Mercedes through the first half of the 2020 Formula 1 season created the perfect storm for an upset winner.

If one thing was clear after the 2020 Formula 1 season-opening Austrian Grand Prix and the following weekend’s Styrian Grand Prix at the Red Bull Ring, it was that Mercedes were going to be tough to beat.

Of course, that is nothing new and almost goes without saying.

They entered the year as the six-time reigning world champions both in terms of the constructor title and the driver title.

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But this year, it was different. Plain and simple, nobody had anything to contend with them on pure race pace.

Entering this past Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix at Autodromo Nazionale Monza, they had won 98 of the 146 races that had been contested since the start of the 2014 season, when the V6 turbo hybrid era began. The only other teams to win any races during this span of six-plus years were Red Bull (29 wins) and Ferrari (19 wins).

In fact, the most recent winner from outside of the “Big 3” had not emerged since March of 2013 in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix at Melbourne Grand Prix Circuit, when Kimi Raikkonen delivered Lotus their final win.

But this dominance opened the door for something that may not have been expected: an upset winner.

If this streak of the “Big 3” was ever going to end, it was going to end in 2020, hands down.

The reason for that was simple.

For the first time, there was no clear second best team. Sure, there was Red Bull’s Max Verstappen, but that is more the case of a “best driver” than it is a best team.

We haven’t seen anything remotely spectacular out of the second Red Bull car since Daniel Ricciardo’s Monaco Grand Prix win back in May of 2018, and that was a race Verstappen probably should have won given his pace earlier that weekend, but he wrecked out in practice and couldn’t qualify.

In fact, both of Ricciardo’s wins that year, the other coming back in April in the Chinese Grand Prix, were wins Verstappen threw away with unforced errors. Better yet, his two wins were his only two podium finishes all year.

Even during Mercedes’ six-year run of total dominance, they had only once won more than 90% of a season’s races (19 of 21 in 2016). At worst, two races were won by other teams in a single season.

But in 2020, who were the “other teams”?

Yes, Mercedes would enter every single race as the favorites. But beyond Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas and Verstappen, who could contend?

Ferrari, the team that have finished runner-up to Mercedes for three consecutive years in the constructor standings, have been absolutely nowhere to be found this season.

Even with a seemingly impossible three solid top four finishes by Charles Leclerc, they are looking at finishing down in sixth or seventh place in the standings, which would be their lowest result since they finished in 10th all the way back in 1980.

This year, the “best of the rest” had effectively moved up from the usual seventh place behind Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari all the way up to fourth.

Eventually, the ball was bound to land on a green zero, and things weren’t going to go Mercedes’ way.

We saw it at Silverstone Circuit, when Verstappen capitalized on a stronger tire strategy to come away with an upset victory ahead of Hamilton and Bottas, who had started the race on the front row.

But eventually when things didn’t go Mercedes’ way, it was going to be someone other than Verstappen there to pick up the pieces.

And this time, there would be no Ferraris and no Red Bull teammate there to pick up the pace, and we would witness the type of history we all should have expected at some point throughout this shortened 17-race season.

As has been documented in the past, when it rains for the Silver Arrows, it pours. They run such a smooth operation on a regular basis that when one thing goes wrong, which is inevitable at some point, it usually all goes down the tubes.

That is exactly what happened at Autodromo Nazionale Monza on Sunday, and Verstappen wasn’t there to keep the 146-race winning streak of the “Big 3” alive.

The only truly surprising aspect of the first upset win in seven and a half seasons was the fact that it wasn’t McLaren, Racing Point or Renault delivering the blow.

Instead, it was Pierre Gasly delivering AlphaTauri, the sport’s seventh place team in the constructor standings, their first win since they were Toro Rosso in 2008 and won with Sebastian Vettel at the same track.

Behind him was the McLaren of Carlos Sainz Jr., the Racing Point of Lance Stroll and the McLaren of Lando Norris, creating the first top four lockout of Mercedes, Red Bull and Ferrari since 2008.