{"id":544397,"date":"2026-03-16T16:43:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544397\/"},"modified":"2026-03-16T16:43:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-16T16:43:10","slug":"jacques-villeneuve-argues-that-mercedes-2026-f1-dominance-is-nothing-like-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/544397\/","title":{"rendered":"Jacques Villeneuve argues that Mercedes\u2019 2026 F1 dominance is nothing like 2014"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jacques Villeneuve<\/a> has argued that Mercedes’ dominance in the 2026 Formula 1 regulations is not like 2014.<\/p>\n

The Brackley outfit dominated the championship from 2014 to 2021, winning seven drivers’ championships with Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Nico Rosberg<\/a> and eight constructors’ titles.<\/p>\n

While Mercedes<\/a> has won every race of the season so far, including the season-opening Australian Grand Prix, the Chinese sprint race and the Chinese Grand Prix, Villeneuve believes that the other teams will “figure a way to manage their energy better”.<\/p>\n

“Well, it’s a dominance, but it’s not huge.\u00a0It’s not like 2014 where there was more than a second and they still had boost to pump up.\u00a0And other cars have the Mercedes engine as well,” the 1997 F1 champion told Sky Sports Germany.<\/p>\n

“It’s just that they seem to have designed a car that is easy to drive, that is well-balanced.\u00a0If you look at Russell, he’s not even breaking a sweat.\u00a0It’s just like a drive in the park.<\/p>\n

“He still has a little gap to go and that’s what allows him to be easily hit, to not destroy his tyres.\u00a0The other teams will figure a way to manage their energy better.\u00a0But if you look at the races, the two Ferrari<\/a> drivers have had better racecraft.<\/p>\n

“Look at the first few laps.\u00a0They figured out in the moment how to use their energy and they bring the fight to Russell.\u00a0That’s been fun and impressive.”<\/p>\n

\"Andrea <\/p>\n

Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes<\/p>\n

Photo by: Lintao Zhang \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Fellow F1 driver and Sky Sports Germany pundit Ralf Schumacher added: “Well, I have to say in Melbourne, there was a big difference.\u00a0Saying that, Melbourne is a different track anyway.\u00a0It doesn’t count for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n

“It’s something very unique on a grip level and everything.\u00a0Going here, Ferrari surprised me a bit.\u00a0And talking about the electrical management, the battery management, when you compare it to before on the first in the sprint, even Ferrari looked a bit better than Mercedes, to be fair, because they seemed to have more battery in some areas.”<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jacques Villeneuve has argued that Mercedes’ dominance in the 2026 Formula 1 regulations is not like 2014. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":544398,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[12295,64,63,263305,817,264921,813,816,3875,13207,269718,945,30966,85,1511],"class_list":["post-544397","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-andrea-kimi-antonelli","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-chinese-gp","tag-f1","tag-f1-chinese-grand-prix","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-george-russell","tag-jacques-villeneuve","tag-jacques-villeneuve-argues-that-mercedesu2019-2026-f1-dominance-is-nothing-like-2014","tag-mercedes","tag-ralf-schumacher","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544397","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=544397"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/544397\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/544398"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=544397"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=544397"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=544397"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}