Will Mercedes be as dominant in 2015?
Anthony Davidson: “By rights you would say that the competition should close up after the engine regulations have been loosened in many ways, which gives the others a chance to close in. I’m not saying Mercedes won’t make their own inroads towards gaining more success from their power unit, but at least when you know the mistakes from the past, where you know the figures you are aiming for, that can help close things up.
“Also, the teams will understand the regulations that came in for 2014 better. Take Lotus, for example. The car must have been fundamentally wrong somewhere along the line, and you’ve had a whole season to understand the problems and the end of the year to start working on next year’s car to start to iron out those problems. So as you climb that pyramid of performance you will reach a point, like we were at two years ago at the end of the old set of regulations, where the competition is quite a bit closer, because there is only a narrow band of performance left that you can optimise.
"So naturally you have to say that it is going to close up, but I could be completely wrong and Mercedes could waltz off into the distance once again with the Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg just fighting each other for the whole season. But I’d be very surprised if it is that same level of dominance for the second year in a row.”
If it is Hamilton v Rosberg once again, how will it unfold?
AD: "I think we saw pretty much the maximum from Nico in terms of qualifying effort last year, he was exceptional on many an occasion and genuinely had the upper hand on Lewis throughout the season, which no one would have put money on before the season kicked off – certainly not me! But then it is fair to say that Lewis had, on average, pretty much the upper hand in race conditions – whether Lewis’ qualifying set up was compromised to focus on the race or whether Nico was genuinely just quick in qualifying and understood what you had to do from the power unit, the car and the tyres I don’t know.
"But either way that pole trophy went to Nico so he clearly showed he had the pace on a one-off lap. But if Lewis has a clean run this year, with less reliability issues, then I am sure he is going to be on his way to winning another world championship.”
Renault will only be supplying Red Bull and Toro Rosso in 2015 – is that a positive or a negative?
AD: "You are getting less feedback, but conversely it helps you to channel your focus and to tighten up the areas that were perhaps holding you back and taking away that energy to perform better. So there are two sides to the argument, but personally I feel that they only really focussed on Red Bull anyway and the other customer teams, particularly at the back of the grid, had bigger problems to fight than just the power unit.
"The Red Bull chassis was clearly good, it was working well in the corners, but they were having to use not enough downforce to compensate for the lack of power compared to the dominant Mercedes. So if Renault can now get on top of those problems then Red Bull will be there.”
How will Honda fare on their return with McLaren?
AD: "I am really torn with how I feel about Honda’s chances for this season. In one way you can say that they know the numbers they are aiming for because they have seen it, they have taken their measurements and they know what they have to achieve so therefore they must be good.
"But on the other side of the argument, nothing beats on-track running in terms of development - and that's where the others have a huge advantage over Honda. I am really torn as to how they are going to perform, but one thing is for certain with Honda and that is that they won’t give up developing. I should imagine they are in for quite a rocky period to start off with, they are already on the back foot after having a rather pathetic test in Abu Dhabi when they didn’t even manage a handful of laps – you can count on one hand the number of laps they achieved.
"So I feel like they are starting off on the back foot, that is my inherit feeling, but knowing the company, knowing how they never give up, knowing how innovative they are I am sure they are going to get it right at some stage. Whether that is this year or next year, who knows? Their collaboration with McLaren might not be as romantic as it was in the past to start off with, but I am sure they are going to achieve great things in the future."
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