Mercedes F1 director of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin admitted he was already aware of the W13’s problems during the pre-season shakedown, which took place on F1 day at Silverstone in February.
Mercedes F1 used the day of filming to shakedown the W13 ahead of pre-season testing in Barcelona and Bahrain. Lewis Hamilton and George Russell drove the W13 for the first time at Silverstone.
The switch to aerodynamics for ground effect has probably hit Mercedes hardest, both literally and figuratively. Both drivers struggled to overcome the ‘porpoise’ phenomenon that plagued them earlier in the year, with downforce pushing the pavement against the tarmac causing the car to bounce off the road.
Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff has admitted that on several occasions the team went the wrong way in trying to get the car to run closer to the ground, and it took the team a long time to sort out the paddy field problem.
Now that the season is over, Mercedes F1 can look back on how they have grown and admit they had a bumpy start.
“Honestly, the signs were there from the start. Even during filming day at Silverstone it was clear the car had this mechanism built in,” said Andrew Shovlin at Mercedes, which was revealed in the F1 post-season debrief .
“Then we did three days in Barcelona. The car wasn’t very competitive, but I was hoping for a big update to bring to Bahrain. Then during the tests in Bahrain we realized we had a serious problem. Also with the kit update installed, the car didn’t go any faster.”
“It’s been an interesting year since then, but we had a lot of work to do to overcome these issues.”
Mercedes F1 were able to gradually close the gap to Red Bull and Ferrari as the season progressed, moving away from midfield to more regular podium contenders and contending for the win by the end of the year.
George Russell took his only win of the season in the Brazilian F1 Grand Prix in his W13 followed by second-placed Lewis Hamilton to take a 1-2 finish.
But when asked about the specific weekend where the car really started to improve, Andrew Shovlin cited the start of the European season as a barometer of when he started finding answers.
“Barcelona will probably remain in the minds of the engineers. Barcelona is where we took the biggest step to overcome aerodynamic rebound,” explained Shovlin.
“We were able to perform quite well, but even after fixing that issue, we found there were other issues to fix with regards to the car’s ride quality.”
“The bump wasn’t great, but it gave me the clarity to work on the next step. It was just a small step in the right direction, but from a learning perspective it was a very important upgrade.”
