Mercedes builds a plan to defeat Red Bull in Mexica, apparently regarded as the fortress of the Milton-Keynes-based outfit.
After an exciting battle in Austin, F1’s entourage is flying to Mexico for the next round of the competition. Over here, Red Bull are being regarded as the favourites because of the track suitability.
But Mercedes isn’t ready to yield. The Brackley based team is mapping out a plan that can defeat Red Bull. Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin explains how their plan is their best bet for this race.
“For us, if we can take the race to them like we did [in Austin], that’s probably the best case scenario that we’re going to envisage,” Shovlin told RacingNews365.com.
“There’s a lot to do. It’s such a different circuit and it’s such a different environment for the power unit to operate in. There haven’t been many circuits where we’ve been far off the pace.”
“We’ve struggled in Monaco, we were struggling in Baku [and] we struggled a bit in that second [race in] Austria. But there are more of them where we can challenge them, and we can challenge for poles.”
“We know where we’ve struggled there in the past. We know what we need to be working on in the next week or so, and that’s what we’ll get stuck into.”
A five race-long struggle for Mercedes & Red Bull
Meanwhile, Verstappen leads the drivers’ championship with a 12 points difference. Red Bull is trailing by 23 points against Mercedes, and this difference can be cropped if the 2013 world champions give a couple of Austin like performances.
So, Mercedes, amidst the engine unreliability, are hanging by a thread. And definitely, they wouldn’t want to lose on both ends. After Mexico, Brazil is the next destination, and Red Bull are again likely to win there.
Also read: Honda touched with incredible gesture by Red Bull in Turkey and United States
