Mercedes map out the verdict of remaining races this season and expect to overthrow Red Bull from the standings as title chances loom.
Mercedes faced two back to back defeats at the hands of Red Bull in the American continent leg of the 2021 season. With Brazil remaining in the expedition to the far-west, Red Bull is only a point away from Mercedes.
After that, there are three more races left in the season, and Mercedes still thinks they can neutralise the winds against them. They feel that a few tracks ahead might suit their car.
“It’s difficult because normally this far into the season, you see the performance settle down a bit, and the swings are still big,” said Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin.
“There will be circuits that will suit us, we had very strong races in Turkey and Sochi and plenty of strong races since the summer break. So it will be up and down.”
“We’ve definitely got out work cut out, on balance they are a little bit ahead of us but it’ll get affected by the weather, the track temperatures, those will play a part.”
“But the bigger thing will be the circuit characteristics. It seems when we’re on an understeery track we tend to go a little bit better, and then at the last two races, it was very much about rear tyre overheating, and it’s quite clear they have the advantage when we’re in that situation.”
Brazil will be tricky for Mercedes
Despite feeling that Mercedes is still in the championship contention, Shovlin thinks Brazil can prove to be tricky for them. However, he claims that his team will look into every weakness before stepping onto Interlagos.
“The weather inherently is volatile there,” Shovlin said of the Brazilian GP. “You can have a 50-degree track one day, and it can be a washout the next. If it is a hot circuit, it’ll probably move it in their direction. A bit of cloud cover may well suit us.
“But one advantage they had [in Mexico] is they were able to go up a step on downforce from the rear wing they usually run to their max downforce wing, but for us, that’s the one that we typically run, it’s just their car seems to have more downforce than us on identical sized wings. And I think that played into their favour.
“In Brazil that should be less of an issue but it’s very hard to predict, and like coming here, we’ll look at the weaknesses of our car and work out how we can minimise them.”
Also read: Max Verstappen breaks Ayrton Senna’s 33-year-old record with his recent win in Mexico
