The factors that led to Hamilton’s and Mercedes’ record-breaking 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic changed so much of 2020. In Formula 1, it swept away the expected calendar, had the teams making incredible contributions to saving lives, and ultimately brought about a consensus that has so often been missing among them. It brought the championship to new tracks and race names, impacted the sporting rules, and had the competitors living in challenging ways.
The 2020 F1 season will forever go down as the pandemic campaign, as, we hope, future seasons return to normality given the recent vaccination breakthroughs. But its result was no different to the three before – Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes triumphed.
They did so at a canter with a car that took Mercedes away from its traditional silver colours, the W11s painted all black to promote a cause the world champion cares about deeply, and which he has been instrumental in promoting: global racial equality. The Silver Arrows became the Black Arrows, but remained F1’s dominant force.
There were multiple reasons behind this. The engineering teams at Brackley and Brixworth combined to produce a car that, for most of the season at least, restored Mercedes’ advantage over its opposition to levels not witnessed since the early years of the turbo-hybrid era. Then there was the opposition itself, reduced in 2020 thanks to Ferrari’s woes. What opposition remained again failed to provide a sterner test, not helped by the pandemic removing some of the tracks where Mercedes has previously struggled.
Hamilton found new ways to keep ahead of a charging, rapid team-mate, while also staying out of reach of the young superstars, who would like nothing more than to usurp him as F1’s benchmark. He addressed weaknesses, continued honing old advantages, and did everything he could to win the title as early as possible, aware of the virus’s threat, which got to him in the end.
Opposition from Ferrari disappears in testing
In the glorious, pre-pandemic days of early 2020, F1 returned to Barcelona for a pair of three-day tests. And it was evident from the outset that Ferrari was in trouble.
The SF1000 that was supposed to
