Mercedes F1 Shows Confidence Ahead of Key Races

Mercedes F1 anticipates improved performance in upcoming races, thanks to strategic vehicle adjustments.

Mercedes F1 hopes to struggle less in the upcoming races. The team has had difficulties exploiting its W15, but Andrew Shovlin, the trackside engineering director, believes that the upcoming tracks will less expose the car’s lack of versatility, and that the more uniform turns could be beneficial.

“The next races are in Monaco, Montreal, and Barcelona,” notes Shovlin. “You have two circuits that are mainly low-speed corners, Monaco and Montreal, everything is low speed. And then there’s Barcelona, which, with its new layout where they have removed the chicane, is an extremely fast circuit.”

“There are many medium-speed corners and very high-speed turns. So, it’s a whole range of possibilities that opens up to us. We do not expect to go to Monaco and suddenly be extremely fast. But what can be observed is that the subtle differences of these circuits might expose these weaknesses a bit less.”

The engineer explains how the uniformity of the turns can help Mercedes: “If you take a place like Montreal, where you’re only dealing with one speed, it might be a bit easier to get the car into the window.”

“We are all doing the usual preparatory work, but fundamentally, we need to develop our way of solving this problem by bringing performance updates to the car.”

“That’s what we are working on. Then, at the circuit, we will just try to optimize what we have as best we can, and gain as many points as possible during this time. These are really the two areas we are working on simultaneously.”