After a difficult weekend in Bahrain, Mercedes gets the chance to start with a clean slate in Saudi Arabia, and if it is up to Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin, the team will seize that opportunity with both hands. He emphasized, among other things, that they had already tried different adjustments during the first two training sessions, although according to the Briton it was not yet optimal.
Mercedes did not have an easy time in Bahrain: George Russell had to deal with overheating of the engine and Lewis Hamilton had problems with his battery, which ultimately prevented the two gentlemen from delivering the desired result. The German racing team logically wants to prevent a recurrence of these problems, and so during the first two training sessions in Saudi Arabia they worked hard to find a solution. However, Shovlin had to admit that this solution has not yet been found.
Hard work doesn’t always pay off
“We ticked off quite a few adjustments during the day,” the Trackside Engineering Director emphasized in an official press release from Mercedes. ‘In the end, however, it doesn’t feel like we ended up in the most favorable position. Our flying lap was messy and traffic threw a spanner in the works, so a clearer and calmer session could have really helped us.” Yet that was not the only problem according to Shovlin: ‘We are simply missing the necessary grip and high speed at the moment. We will be looking for solutions for this in the run-up to the qualification.’
Things also didn’t go smoothly when it came to the long runs, which was far from ideal, according to the Brit. ‘They were all really not very long, so we would have preferred to see it differently. The data is limited, but it does show that we seem to have an excellent race pace.’ Yet everything falls apart when the two drivers shout over the on-board radio that things are not going well. “Neither gentleman was happy with the overall balance,” Shovlin admitted. ‘We still have to find some time for qualifying, but the positive thing is that we can look for that improvement in many places.’
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