All that proves is the times are completely meaningless, the Mercedes isn't so far ahead that it can bang a very quick lap in on old hards. Nobodies really pushing yet.
Benson at his best.
Errm, that info was suggesting the Merc was effectively way out ahead of everyone, not far behind. Whole point was 3 laps of fuel vs 18 laps will be over a second difference in times easily, add to that the slowest tyre, and you have another second, add to that wanting the tyres to go 18 laps vs 3, another second + .
I had a look around for that info yesterday but couldn't see it but I suspected that Merc had been well into their long run testing, being the first team to hit that point in Jerez.
As for unreliability, it's not so much the title as the prospect of anyone dominating from start to finish is less likely with reliability problems.
If every driver didn't finish 1/3rd of their races last year, then depending on the races Red Bull could have dropped enough points to at least make it a fight throughout the year. People are just bored of the "oh, Red Bull are better than everyone already, and we know half way through the year they'll destroy everyone even more" scenario. UNpredictable season in which the winner of every race isn't an almost certainty, yes please.
I did say a lot last year that I felt Webber's issues were more down to overheating than bad luck. Simply being the slower of the cars meant he was in dirty hotter air than Vettel, so he had more kers failures and more other failures, he was pushing the car harder at higher rev's to pass people with DRS, etc. Vettel had way more issues with failures the few times he was following people rather than leading the way. I always felt the RBR was borderline overheating last year, but they seemingly haven't taken that on board, haven't learnt from their kers failures and in a year with massively hotter engine parts they have done no where near enough to rectify their problem.
