It seems that when it comes to F1’s most consistently developed cars in 2015, Mercedes isn’t even cracking the top 4.

Now that the season is over, the numbers are finally in and we’ve arrived at a clear and decisive winner when it comes to the “development” race.

But before we get into that, let’s take a look at how the numbers were crunched. The guys behind this analysis took every team’s fastest overall lap from each weekend, and expressed it as a % of the overall fastest time – which didn’t always come in Q3 by the way.

They also looked at which teams improved or lost ground during the entire season, except for the first race in Australia. In the end, you’re about to know how each team’s average compares while looking at their 2nd, 3rd and 4th race, as opposed to their final three races.

Force India was the obvious winner in 2015, with a gain of 1.014%. They relied heavily on their B-spec car which pretty much proved a match for Red Bull and Williams over the last three races. Of course, the fact that Hulkenberg and Perez were both great on the track, also helped.

The second most-improved car belonged to Marussia, believe it or not. They had an overall gain of 0.323% throughout the year and even though we should only trust them as far as we can throw them, they might surprise a lot of people thanks to their Mercedes power units in 2016.

Third most improved team on the grid was McLaren, who really did improve over the course of the season. Sure, overall, their results were downright terrible, but they still managed to put together a couple of great laps here and there and score some well-earned points. Overall gain was 0.157%.

The fourth and final team to make progress throughout the year was Red Bull, with a gain of 0.154%. By the end of the season, they were already a match for Williams and with an improved Renault (TAG Heuer) power unit in 2016, they should do a lot better than this year.

As for the rest of the grid, well, Mercedes didn’t actually need to improve, proven by the fact that their early season average matched their end of season average perfectly. Ferrari on the other hand, just like Toro Rosso, Williams, Sauber and Lotus actually lost momentum as the season went on.

Still, the Scuderia was the only team that when at its best, looked like they could actually throw down with Mercedes and hope to walk away with a win.

Story references: formula1