Mercedes F1 faces scrutiny as Hamilton’s race ends on a low note with underperforming soft tires at Silverstone.
Mercedes F1 Feared Lewis Hamilton Might Lose Victory in Final Kilometers of the British Grand Prix. Max Verstappen was closing fast at the end of the race, and Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin admitted he was worried about the soft tires collapsing in performance, which had not happened before.
“The first two times we used this tire, it performed well,” Shovlin explained. “We know they have a very fast car, and it was a bit worrisome because, after all the decisions made during the race, losing it in the final moments would have been really horrible.”
“But yes, it’s really good that we were able to hang on. How did I feel in the last laps? It was quite difficult. I started to relax a bit three or four laps from the finish because we saw that Max really didn’t have the pace to reduce Lewis’s lead enough to catch up.”
Mercedes had no medium tires left and chose soft tires for the end of the race, opting to warm up on cold asphalt to try to overcut Lando Norris. A choice that proved less good than Verstappen’s hard tires.
“We had a set of hard tires. When we mounted them, we did not know they were going to be as good as they were. The hard tire was therefore the right tire to use at that point in the race. You saw how strong it was with Max. What influenced us was that we tried to do an undercut on Lando.”
“We are transitioning on a track that is just on the edge of moisture, just becoming dry, and we thought the soft tire would give us the best warm-up, the best chance of gaining ground on Lando in the first lap to try and take the lead.”
“What we really didn’t expect was that the hard would be so good. We could see that Max was able to come back at us in the last laps, but fortunately, we had enough margin to stay ahead until the checkered flag, when it’s important.”
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Mercedes Grapples with Tire Trouble at Silverstone Mercedes Grapples with Tire Trouble at Silverstone
