“Might present some similar challenges,” Mercedes accept tricky conditions in Baku
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Andrew Shovlin
Andrew Shovlin, the director of Mercedes trackside engineering, has opened up the talks of the struggle they went through in Monaco, he also predicts the same for Baku coming next week. The team managed to close the gap between the top teams in the heart of Spain. But the same struggles coming up in Monaco. The director clarifies the reason for it as well.
Mercedes were suffering from the bouncing since the start of their 2022 season, but they brought major changes to stop it throughout. And things started to work in their direction or felt like they did, in the Spanish Grand Prix. With Russell successfully holding up to Max Verstappen for quite some time opened everyone’s eyes to the jump the silver arrows managed to bring.
But the W13 is still struggling with the slow-speed corners, and Monaco being filled with it pinpointed their weakness.
“In Barcelona, we had shown that we had good race pace, even though we know there is still work to do to close the gap to Red Bull and to Ferrari. But the challenge of Monaco is the low-speed nature, it’s a very bumpy circuit and we were struggling with the ride of the car,” said Andrew.
Expectations Andrew Shovlin is carrying ahead of Baku
Detailing the poor performance in Monaco, the team isn’t thinking big ahead of the weekend in Baku, they are hoping to carry their struggles for yet another week. Baku has major of its track covered with similar slow speed corners we see in Monaco.
“Baku might present some similar challenges. We are working on areas though to try and improve the ride, try and be able to run the car a bit closer to its optimum window,” said Andrew.
He continues to talk about the expectations he wants to bring in the next Mercedes upgrade that will take them again to the top. “But we are well aware that in addition to adding base performance to the car, we’ve got to make it work over a wider range of circuits. So, these are all things that we are busy with in preparation for Baku but also longer-term because there are other challenging tracks that will come up.” explained Andrew.
He continues “But all of those projects are being worked on really hard because the team and the drivers are desperate to get back to the front.”
Mercedes are stable in the third position on the constructors’ table with 134 points. George Russell is still above the Ferrari driver with 1 point. Hamilton is still struggling with 50 points in the 6th position.
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Soham Raj Jain
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