After dominating FP1 on Friday, Mercedes’ advantage over Red Bull shrunk, with Sergio Perez clocking the fastest time in FP2, instilling fear in Mercedes.
Mercedes arrives in the United States with the hope of dominating the whole US Grand Prix weekend. But their hopes were curtailed when Sergio Perez clocked the fastest time in FP2.
Signalling that Red Bull has levelled their rivals’ FP1 might. Now, Andrew Shovlin discussing his concerns, admits that Mercedes lost pace in the second session.
“The first session was very good in terms of single lap pace,” Shovlin said after the session. “Both cars were getting good grip out of the Soft tyres and the balance was in a good place.”
“The track is pretty bumpy, which causes issues in a couple of corners, but it’s not so different to previous years and certainly not as bad as we feared.”
“The second session didn’t look as strong, it was easy to overheat the tyres and that was making it harder to be consistent. Lewis had a lap deleted that would have us looking more competitive, but regardless, it seemed like we’d lost a bit of pace.”
Also read: Red Bull chief thinks Max Verstappen-Lewis Hamilton scuffle during FP2 at COTA was unnecessary
Number of reasons why Mercedes lost pace
Shovlin isn’t sure what caused the cropping of Mercedes’ pace on Friday. Though he is circulating around a few factors and claims, probably hotter conditions are not suiting Mercedes.
“That [the pace] could be down to a number of things,” he said. “Perhaps we’d not adapted to the hotter conditions well, others may have improved, or it could be that some of our changes haven’t worked as expected.
“It’s useful to have found a few issues that we can get stuck into this this evening as there’s plenty we can do to improve, but the overall feeling from the second session is that it’s going to be very tight at the front and both Red Bulls are looking like they are in the fight for pole.”
Also read: Red Bull boss Christian Horner not ruling out deliberate engine change by Mercedes
