Scott Mitchell-Malm

you could afford to not push through something for Miami that's maybe as big in scope as it could have been because you've got something else coming in the medium term, which you've been able to put that attention on.

And as Ed said, you get an extra few weeks in the wind tunnel or whatever it is, you're just going to be, if you're getting a nice development curve or return curve for the development that you're doing, that could pay off after Miami.

And it could be that it's nice and close in Miami and you think, oh, this team slipped back a little bit.

And actually, the picture's going to change again when we've had another short mini-break before Canada and then other races beyond that into the European season.

It's fascinating.

There's so many plates being spun at the moment by the teams.

And what we see in Miami could make us think, oh, wow, this has changed completely from the first three races.

It could be an illusion.

And within that, I mean, I did ask Oscar Piastri this, and he sort of sidestepped it and flipped it more towards that car deficit that we've mentioned already.

So it will depend on what step they've made on the car side.

But there is also an element here that if F1's backing away from the extremities on the energy management side that have been a massive factor in the start of the season...

and have been, you know, a chunk of the McLaren deficit to Mercedes because the understanding of that and mastery of that has been one of the big works teams advantage in the early races stands to reason to me that that will chip away at Mercedes advantage over a qualifying lap and over a race as well, especially as there is now the challenge of teams getting on top of the way it works in reality, because it isn't just a case of

Okay, well, we'll charge less and deploy less over the lap.

Would it be that simple?

It's going to be, okay, how do you then plan that around the lap?

How does that impact your start procedures, your restart procedures?

Look at George Russell, China and Japan struggling with safety car restarts and being swallowed up thereafter.

when you've got different boost levels in different parts of the lap, when it impacts how you use overtake mode as well, it's not just a qualifying thing.

This is something that will impact every competitive element of the weekend.

So if the ultimate potential of what you can do with your battery and how you use it has been reduced and Mercedes was the best at that,