today, 11:57 | by Lieke Jacobs
Andrew Shovlin, the Trackside Engineering Director of the Mercedes team, also saw that both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were also struggling on Saturday. During qualifying, the two men did not get further than a seventh and eighth time respectively, which meant they could not compete for the front rows of the grid. According to Shovlin, things go wrong mainly due to the performance that the W14 can deliver in the slow corners, but Mercedes does have a strategic advantage that could possibly play a role.
After the race in Singapore, both Hamilton and Russell were not satisfied, both for very different reasons. Russell threw away his third place on the last lap, and Hamilton started the race disappointed after a disappointing qualifying. The gentlemen can also do little in Japan at the moment now that Ferrari and McLaren are doing well and Red Bull Racing is performing at its normal, dominant level again. They are not really satisfied yet at the German racing stable, but according to Shovlin there are still some opportunities to make use of certain factors here and there.
Mercedes did see small improvements, but it was not enough yet
Shovlin emphasized in Mercedes’ press release shortly after qualifying that the team had made the necessary adjustments to the car during the night from Friday to Saturday, but the improvements had not really gotten off the ground yet. “We adjusted several things overnight to try to improve performance in the first sector of the track, because that’s where we were really bad on Friday. We have been able to find some improvement, but due to the different speeds in the different corners here in Suzuka, it is still far from optimal.’
So the leak is still not over for Mercedes, but Shovlin knows that Mercedes has gone through these kinds of processes before this season. ‘As the season progressed we were already successful in improving performance in slower speed corners. But in that first sector you need a lot of downforce for a certain road holding, and the W14 is simply not the strongest car in that area, so that didn’t really help us.’ What also didn’t help was the performance of the competition, who also showed up quite strong during qualifying. “In the championship, Ferrari is our main competitor and we will pay special attention to them strategically because they are ahead of us on the grid. Hopefully we can take the fight to them.”
According to Shovlin, Mercedes will have a strategic advantage in terms of tire sets due to a set of hard tires they have left. ‘When we arrived we already expected that tire wear would be very rapid, and that suspicion was confirmed on Friday and during the third training session. But our second set of hard tires means we have more strategic options that Ferrari probably doesn’t have.” The Trackside Engineering Director hopes that his team will be able to make use of this. “We’ll have to find out in the first part of the race how the wear and tear is going and what impact it will have on our race.”
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2023-09-23 09:57:00
#Mercedes #hard #time #slow #corners #Improvement #top #Maximum
