Here's why Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton have been so 'dominant' in past few years, according to F1 pundit

Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton had the majority of the necessary ingredients to win. That is one of the reasons the team has been so dominant in the past few years. Marc Priestley, a former McLaren mechanic turned F1 pundit, holds this opinion. Mercedes has been dominant for almost a decade. The team rose to prominence with the 2014 F1 regulations change. Since then, there has been no looking back for them.

The German team won all the constructor's championships from 2014 to 2021. The team had a clean sweep over the driver's championships as well, except for the 2021 F1 season, where Max Verstappen won. This season, however, the team has been caught off-guard by the new regulations.

Mercedes has been a distant third fastest for the majority of the season. It has not picked up a single race win this season and has only bagged one pole position. Despite that, according to Marc Priestley, the improvement shown by the team has been very impressive. In the PitStop Podcast, Marc said,

“All the best teams are looking for marginal gains, where you’re just looking for a 1% improvement on every single thing that you do. And that’s from the drivers, to the pitstop crew, to everybody. If you can improve by 1% over what you did yesterday, that gradually moves you forward. I think that’s what Mercedes has been really impressive with this year."

Marc also touched on how to win a world championship, you need everything firing on all cylinders. He talked about how all of the 10 ingredients need to be in place for a title triumph. He said,

“Because to win a World Championship is an indescribably difficult thing to do, you need so many elements to be perfect to make it happen. It’s like the ingredients of a cake. If you’ve got nine out of 10, you’re going to get an average cake, it’s not going to taste quite right or it won’t rise, you need all 10."

The car is just not right for Mercedes this season

Marc Priestley talked about how the German squad has almost everything in place for this season as well. One area where it lags is the car and that is why the season has been a bit underwhelming. He said,

“And over the last seven years or so, I think Mercedes and Lewis have pretty much had all 10 – they’ve got everything right, they’ve got the whole package. And that’s why they’ve been so dominant. This year, they’ve still got nine out of 10, but the car hasn’t quite been right. They’ve still got the right team, the right people, the resources in the right place, the right team culture, they’ve got the right attitude, all of those things are still there that made them champions for seven years on the trot.

If Mercedes is unable to win a race this season, then it would be the first time since the 2011 season that the team would end a season without a win in the bag.