The close battles hide an overwhelming reality: the Silver Arrows' average advantage in qualifying is 0.56 seconds, only in 2014 was there a greater dominance, the competition has been warned.
The first three races of the 2026 Formula 1 season have shown close duels between Mercedes and Ferrari, the Maranello team has been able to apply pressure at the start of races and even pull off overtakes, however, behind that apparent equality hides a very different reality: Mercedes dominates the category with an advantage that is already historic.
The data doesn't lie, after the first three rounds, Ferrari is the closest pursuer, but the average difference in qualifying is 0.56 seconds, in race conditions, Mercedes' advantage is 0.53 seconds per lap. To put this superiority into context, it's enough to remember that in 2025, McLaren dominated with its car but only had an average advantage of 0.19 seconds over Red Bull.
Even in 2023, when Max Verstappen won 19 out of 22 races, Red Bull's average advantage over Ferrari in qualifying was barely 0.19 seconds, the last time a comparable difference was seen was in 2020, when Mercedes outperformed Red Bull by an average of 0.55 seconds.
If we look further back, the situation becomes even more impressive. In 2016, Mercedes had an average advantage of 0.74 seconds over Red Bull in qualifying, which is the last time a team had a greater advantage than Mercedes currently has. In 2014, with the arrival of the hybrid era, the average advantage over Red Bull was 0.83 seconds, the biggest dominance by a team since the turn of the millennium.
To find a dominance similar to Mercedes' current one, you have to go back to their own years of hegemony. Not even the most successful periods of other teams come close to these figures. Red Bull in the Sebastian Vettel era (2010-2013) had its best record in 2010, with a 0.4 second advantage over Ferrari. Ferrari in the Michael Schumacher era reached its biggest gap in 2001, with 0.37 seconds over McLaren.
The question that now arises is whether the competition will be able to close the gap. At the beginning of the hybrid era, it took four years for a team to seriously challenge Mercedes, it wasn't until 2018 when Ferrari was, on average, just 0.08 seconds behind. Today the conditions are somewhat different: the current advantage is large, but smaller than in 2014. In addition, the ADUO regulations allow the struggling teams to close the gap more quickly in terms of the engine.
However, there is a factor that distorts the picture: Mercedes' poor starts allow the competition to get closer in the first laps, but if the Silver Arrows have a clear track, they are practically unbeatable. Ferrari, McLaren and Red Bull fight with limited resources, for now, everything indicates that the 2026 World Championship will only go through Mercedes.