Breaking news
Formula 1
Mercedes "at the very worst end" of tyre problems
Mercedes chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin admits that there's an "element of urgency" in the Brackley Formula 1 team's need to address its tyre blistering problems.
Adam Cooper
Edited: Aug 10, 2020, 2:22 PM
Copy link
Share on Viber
Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were badly hampered by blistering in the 70th Anniversary GP, which compromised their pace and allowed Red Bull and Max Verstappen to score a well-judged strategic victory.
Shovlin said that a difficult 70th Anniversary GP showed that the team that it was at the "very, very worst end" of the blistering spectrum, and it now has days to resolve its issues or it risks looking "silly" in the Spanish GP in Barcelona, where hot conditions are expected.
"We knew that blistering was an issue," said Shovlin. "We knew that last week. We know what sort of temperatures that it will occur at. And so that wasn't news to us.
"What was news to us was we're kind of at the very, very worst end of that problem.
"And Red Bull appears to be at the very best end of that spectrum. And that's the thing that we need to understand. Because there's been other races where everyone's been in the same boat, but why are we an outlier? Right now, we haven't got the answer.
"And you know, there's an element of urgency here because we're in Barcelona, we're flying out there on Tuesday, running on Friday, it's forecast to be 30C, the track will be a bit like this. It's a high-energy circuit."
Read Also:
- Hamilton says new pressures making tyres like "balloons"
- Mercedes boss Wolff refutes Bottas' "sleeping" claim
- Mercedes "sleeping" when Verstappen got ahead - Bottas
Shovlin conceded that the return to Pirelli's hardest C1 tyre in Spain may help the situation.
"If we don't solve it, you can probably hide from it a little bit on that C1 tyre. But we've still got to run the tyre that today was causing us grief, and that wasn't solving the problem for us.
"We've seen Red Bull, they're not that far off us in races, even when we're looking at our best. So I think to be honest, if we don't make progress, we'll be in trouble there as well. So that's kind of where this urgency to get a bit of a grip on it comes from."
Shovlin says that the team has learned a lot in the past from digging into disastrous races such as Singapore 2018 or Mexico 2018.
"When we've had those bad races, it's actually kind of taught us more about where the performance exists on the car.
"And some of them we've realised there's mechanisms at play that we didn't even know about that are quite critical, and they become sources of future development.
"So it's not to say that right now we've learned, because I think this is not a straightforward problem.
"This wasn't something that last year's car suffered from. And this year's car is, by and large, an evolution of last year's car. There's not any areas where we've really changed philosophy, we've just been pushing down the same paths for development.
"Right now, we don't understand what the problem is."
We want your opinion!
What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?
Take our 5 minute survey.
- The Motorsport.com Team
Read and post comments
Read also :
Share Or Save This Story
Copy link
Share on Viber
Previous article Racing Point "99% sure" Perez will race in Spain
Next article Ricciardo: "Seb spin" rubbed salt in the wound for Renault
Top Comments
There are no comments at the moment. Would you like to write one?
View More & Comment
More from
Adam Cooper
RB: Tsunoda “mentally on a different level” in 2024
Formula 1
Formula 1
Japanese GP
RB: Tsunoda “mentally on a different level” in 2024
Andretti planning F2 and F3 entries to promote US talent to F1 team
Formula 1
Formula 1
Andretti planning F2 and F3 entries to promote US talent to F1 team
Andretti F1 team formally opens new Silverstone facility
Formula 1
Formula 1
Andretti F1 team formally opens new Silverstone facility
More from
Mercedes
F1 United States GP: Kimi Antonelli takes pole with George Russell sixth
Formula 1
Formula 1
United States GP
35 min
F1 United States GP: Kimi Antonelli takes pole with George Russell sixth
Kimi Antonelli hails "step forward" at United States GP as Mercedes chips away at upgrades
Formula 1
Formula 1
United States GP
16 h
Kimi Antonelli hails "step forward" at United States GP as Mercedes chips away at upgrades
Latest news
F1 United States GP: Sunday schedule, weather forecast and how to watch
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
5 min
F1 United States GP: Sunday schedule, weather forecast and how to watch
2026 F1 United States Grand Prix starting grid
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
14 min
2026 F1 United States Grand Prix starting grid
F1 2026 qualifying head-to-head: United States GP
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
27 min
F1 2026 qualifying head-to-head: United States GP
F1 United States GP: Kimi Antonelli takes pole with George Russell sixth
Formula 1
F1 Formula 1
United States GP
35 min
F1 United States GP: Kimi Antonelli takes pole with George Russell sixth
Feature
Discover prime content
Subscribe and access Motorsport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
You have 2 options:
- Become a subscriber.
- Disable your adblocker.
Subscribe now Already subscribed? Sign in here
Already disabled your adblocker?
Reload page
Manage Alerts
Subscribe