Mercedes v Ferrari: Strengths and weaknesses in F1 title battle

Mercedes have explained exactly where the balance of power lies between themselves and Ferrari as Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel scrap for world championship glory. Ferrari have been credited as having the quickest car on the grid in 2018, after years of Mercedes dominance in the V6 hybrid era.

The Scuderia have made considerable gains in the power stakes in 2018, closing the gap in the constructors' standings, which stands at just 10 points to Mercedes heading into the summer break.

Vettel led Hamilton by 14 points at this stage last season, but the Brit is 24 points ahead over the shutdown this time around, despite Ferrari's apparent advantage.

Although that has been put down to a string of small, but costly, errors by the German, the Silver Arrows believe that the cars involved are more balanced than is being reported.

"Certainly for a few races now we have been missing just a few horsepower to a Ferrari that has had a very, very impressive rate of development through the year," technical director James Allison said in Mercedes' YouTube debrief.

"We are probably on average better than Ferrari through the corners at most tracks, sometimes they take a bit from us in the low-speed, but medium and high-speed we normally prosper relative to them.

"I would say they have tended to be a bit stronger than us when it's at tracks that are strongly rear limited, but we are talking small margins, and us the opposite.

"We have tended to have better pit stops, they have tended to have better starts, although we appear to have put that right in recent races with a lot of work from the good guys in the controls department here in the factory.

"These are all small, small margins which is why the championship has yo-yoed one way and the other.

"It's quite interesting to note that in the 12 races we have had so far, only five of them have actually been won by the car that most people would agree was the quickest on that weekend."