Mercedes chief track operations engineer Andrew Shovlin believes Mercedes won’t be as fast as Red Bull on the next two tracks, but admits he’s still not sure which tracks in the rest of the calendar will suit them better and which will suit Red Bull.
Red Bull was the favorite after the pre-season tests and Max Verstappen justified that by setting the best times in all three free practice sessions and in the qualifying in which he took a convincing pole position with a four tenths advantage over Hamilton.
In the race, Mercedes showed very similar speed as Red Bull and they kept their tyres very well, which allowed Hamilton to successfully defend against Verstappen, even though the Dutchman had 11 laps fresher tyres at the end of the race.
Bahrain is a track with medium downforce requirements and on which performance and degradation are determined by the rear tyres, and the most turns are slow followed by long flat sections. The next two races in Imola and Portimao should provide a more detailed picture of the balance of power between the top two teams.
“I don’t think we’re good enough in fast turns, and there are a lot of them on Imola and Portimao,” Shovlin said.
“It’s one area where they have an advantage over us at the moment.”
“Bahrain is a track that is very difficult for the rear tyres and it was very windy. We had a wind speed of 30-40 km/h which is the upper value in a normal season. We hope this is not one of our better tracks because we struggled quite a bit, but in the end we adjusted the car properly. But it was extremely difficult. ”
“If you look at how Red Bull behaved in tests and training, their car works really well. At no point did they look weak. We hope to find tracks that will suit us better than this.”
Mercedes still doesn’t have the fastest car
After the race, Hamilton said that the victory in Bahrain means a lot to Mercedes because they achieved it without having the best car, and Shovlin agrees with his driver.
“We still don’t think we have the best car, but we don’t think we’ve got everything out of the package,” Shovlin said.
“When you’re developing a car, there are a lot of areas where you can get performance, and we think some of them didn’t bring what they needed. So we’re going to work hard to bring performance to the car over the next races.”
The next three races are driven on Imola, Portimao and Barcelona, and Mercedes thinks that fast turns on those tracks will not suit them.
“There are elements on those tracks that should move us in the right direction,” he said.
“In Bahrain, we struggled with the back end, and those tracks are a little easier on that. But we’re not naive to think that fast sections will be something that will be our strength on those tracks.”
Hamilton not sure what to expect
Hamilton agreed that they are not sure what the balance of power between Mercedes and Red Bull will be on the next tracks.
“We can’t deal with them in qualifying at the moment, but I thought we could get closer to them in the race. But it turned out a little too close for my liking,” said Hamilton, who beat Verstappen by 0.7 s advantage.
“We don’t know how much better they will be on the next tracks we go on or how much worse they will be. Maybe our car will be better elsewhere than here or maybe it will be worse. We’ll have to wait and see.”
Mercedes took the front row in qualifying last year in Imola, Portimao and Barcelona and Hamilton was the winner in all three races.
