No F1 driver says they have the quickest car. Maybe this time they’re all correct · RaceFans

Red Bull won every single one of the 12 rounds leading up to last year’s summer break.

But 12 months on, things could hardly be more different. Seven drivers from four teams have taken victories so far.

Last year Red Bull faced constant questions about whether they might win every single race. This year they are being grilled over why they’ve kept Sergio Perez in their team when his dismal results seriously threaten their constructors championship chances.

This did not appear to be on the cards as the teams left the fifth round of the season in China a little over three months ago. Max Verstappen had won four of the first five races and probably would have made it a clean sweep had his right-rear brake not jammed on at the start in Australia, forcing him out.

Since then, Red Bull’s rivals have closed in, starting with McLaren. “I think if you look at the last five, six races, they for sure have been the best,” said Verstappen at Spa. “It’s quite clear.”

McLaren turned their season around when they introduced a significant new upgrade package at the Miami Grand Prix. Lando Norris won the race with the aid of a timely Safety Car period, though it remains his only victory to date:

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McLaren have undoubtedly been in far better shape over the second half of the season so far than the first. This data shows only part of the picture, however. While Red Bull had a clear pace advantage over a single lap in Austria, where Verstappen took pole position by four-tenths of a second, McLaren were in great shape at the end of the race and Norris was able to repeatedly attack his rival until the pair collided.

Red Bull responded to the threat from McLaren by bringing a drastically revised bodywork package intended for high-downforce tracks to the Hungaroring, three weeks ahead of schedule, for Verstappen’s car only. However he says the team need to do more to repel the threat from McLaren.

“Fair play to them, I think they have done a great job,” he said. “From our side we have a bit of work to do.

“There’s a few things also to analyse over the break, from race one all the way to here, what we have done. Then try to fight back from Zandvoort, see if we can actually improve the situation, try to turn it around, try to be more competitive.”

While Verstappen urges his team to push on with car development, in real terms the RB20 remains the most competitive car in F1. On average it has been 0.11% off the ultimate pace this year compared to 0.32% for the next-best car, McLaren’s MCL38.

This is already much closer than it has been in past years. But focusing only on recent races shows the current state of competition between the leading two teams is even closer. Over the last five races Red Bull have been 0.15% off the pace, McLaren 0.17%:

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This is ‘as near as makes no difference’ territory. The differences between track configurations, weather conditions are now having a much more significant effect on performance. So, of course, is driver performance – hence the intrigue around Perez.

Verstappen is far from alone in downplaying his team’s form. After the Hungarian Grand Prix, Norris remarked: “Last weekend was the first one I can quite happily say we were easily the best team. Both in quali and the race.”

Even then he was alert to the threat posed by Verstappen. “Max only missed out on pole by four-hundredths of a second,” said Norris. “It’s nothing.

“At the same time you could have said he was just as quick in qualifying and, yes, he didn’t have a great race, but he’s still pretty quick. He just made a few too many mistakes and the race didn’t go too well for him.”

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Moreover, while Red Bull and McLaren have led the way on pace so far, another team has already won more races than the latter: Mercedes. Their pure performance at Spa is disguised in the data above, as they spent a dry Friday assessing a new floor design they did not race, and were a second off the pace in qualifying, partly due to getting their tactics wrong in the rain-hit session. Come the race the W15 was flying.

Norris said he was not surprised by their performance, and believes people took too little notice of the potential Mercedes showed in earlier races.

“I feel like everyone just doubts them, doubts what Mercedes can do,” he said. “They’ve been almost just as quick as us for the last month.

“Everyone underestimates what they can do and on a day like today, they just do what they are very capable of doing, and, it’s a good job. So fair play to them.”

It’s standard practice for drivers to play down the performance of their cars and talk up their rivals. But it’s seldom been this tricky to pick apart the off-track spin from the on-track potential. With Ferrari now showing signs of correcting the slump which dragged them out of contention in recent races, the prospects of a competitive second half of the season are extremely good.

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