F1 - Red Bull, McLaren, Ferrari: who improved the most?

Comparing the data of the 2020 and 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix, let’s find out which of the top teams performed better during the winter.

The weekend of the Emilia Romagna GP will represent the first key moment of the season. The race to be held at the Imola track will in fact provide further indication of the cars’ real potential, after the weekend in Bahrain suggested that the Red Bull RB16B will be the car to beat this year. The Milton Keynes team closed the gap to the top and, as a result of the difficulties of the Mercedes W12, even placed themselves in the front row for the title fight with the Anglo-German team.

Behind the two teams, the fight for third place in the Constructors’ Championship looks like an affair between McLaren, now powered by Mercedes, and a revived Ferrari, who in qualifying for the Bahrain GP placed Charles Leclerc less than a tenth from Valtteri Bottas’ W12. So which team improve the most in Bahrain?

This question can be answered by analyzing the percentage gap from the top in both the 2020 and 2021 editions, thanks to the data provided by The Race. First of all it is important to underline how the reference team has changed from one year to the next: if in 2020 Mercedes dominated the Bahrain race, in 2021, despite the final victory of Lewis Hamilton, the team to beat was Red Bull.

The first important data is therefore the gain of each team compared to the gap to Mercedes in the 2020 edition. From this it emerges that Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren have all recovered in 2021: the Red car has made the biggest leap, earning 1.381 %(which means 1.381 seconds in a 100-second lap), while McLaren recovered 0.420% and Red Bull 0.474% , a percentage sufficient to dethrone the Mercedes, which is suffering from the downforce cuts generated by the floor and diffuser.

To better understand the situation of Ferrari and McLaren, however, it is necessary to highlight the evolution of the gap, from 2020 to 2021, between these two teams and Red Bull, which at this moment represents the team to beat. This figure reveals that, despite the switch from Renault to Mercedes engines, McLaren lost slightly ( + 0.054% ) from the Anglo-Austrian team in the 2021 Bahrain GP compared to the 2020 edition; on the other hand, Scuderia Ferrari inevitably recovered a lot compared to the Milton Keynes team ( -0.907% ). So what is the significance of this data?

Starting from Red Bull, we can only applaud the work of the team led by Christian Horner , who managed to be the favorite in these first events of the season. The gain compared to Mercedes was not huge and was certainly favored by the regulatory changes, which seem to help the cars with the raked set-up more pronounced, but for the moment the Milton Keynes team can take credit for bridging the gap from the top. As for Ferrari, it must be emphasized that the Red team has kept its promise to fight for third place in the Constructors, recovering much of the gap accumulated in the disastrous 2020 season. If the gain shown in Bahrain, theoretically a track unfavorable to the SF21, should be improved over the course of the season, the return to victory in 2021, perhaps in a race full of twists, may not be a chimera.

The situation is different for McLaren, which of the three is probably the one with the greatest unexpressed potential due to the recent switch to the Mercedes Power Unit. Although Lando Norris finished the Bahrain GP more than 40 seconds from the top, the Englishman said the team was close to the top, a fact that is not corroborated by the data highlighted above. After the first Grand Prix of the season, the Woking team therefore seems to have maintained a constant gap from the top compared to last year, seeing Ferrari approaching dangerously (yet the Maranello team still seems to be behind in race pace) and the surprising AlphaTauri.

Finally, it should be emphasized that these figures could change over the next few races, when Formula 1 will visit circuits with different characteristics from that of Sakhir. In this sense, the GP of Emilia Romagna will represent the first test to verify the balance of power between the top teams.