“That would write off the season”– Mercedes claims that adopting the high rake concept would push them out of the contest.
Mercedes this year doesn’t have a strong advantage against others, and the reports are claiming that it is because of the new floor regulations that are not suiting Mercedes’ interests.
Mercedes have claimed that the new regulations have harmed the low rake manufacturers than the high rake ones, but at the same time resorting to the high rake approach at this moment will doom them.
“We’ve got a car that could win a championship if we make some clever decisions with it, do some good work with it and operate well over the year,” Andrew Shovlin explained.
“But whether or not it’s high rake or low rake, we can’t do anything about that now. What we certainly can’t do is suddenly say we’re going to lift the rear of our car 30mm and work with that because that would write off the season.”
“We would lose so much in doing that – to recover it, it’s just not practical.”
The big hit with the rules is the option.
He admits that Red Bull has managed to cover most of the deficit against Mercedes this year and may end them win the championship this season, but still Mercedes can hope for a tight competition.
“Did this set of regulations drag back low-rake cars more than high-rake cars? That may well be the case,” he said. “I know that they [Red Bull] won the last race [of 2020], but, generally, we were ahead at the end of the year, and that’s not the case now.
“So, either we took a bigger hit with the rules, or they’ve had a faster rate of development since they applied the regulation changes. But it is what it is.”
