© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says “the focus for us is making sure we can challenge Red Bull or whoever it is at the front next year”.
While speaking to the media in Hungary, Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained how much the big Monaco upgrade helped the team understand their car, and subsequently helped them go in a better development direction.
“The gains change track to track,” Shovlin said.
“The front end of the car is a bit more coherent, a bit stronger now so we’re having to work to balance that.
“But it does look to have gone in the right direction and our correlation over the last year has been strong in that we make bits and we race them, we’re not putting kits on and off trying to decide whether we’ve done the right thing.
“However, look at where Aston Martin were at the start of the year and then where they’ve been in some of the recent races. That’s only because other people are developing very quickly.
If you like SilverArrows.Net, consider supporting us by buying us a coffee!
“It’s difficult to gauge the progress when you just look at how the teams stack up. But the fact is, you can see those moves where people do bring updates.
“We just need to work to try and improve the development rate but the focus for us is making sure we can challenge Red Bull or whoever it is at the front next year.
“So it’s a case of balancing that bigger goal with what we can do on this car and also learning with this car because if you don’t change the car, you don’t learn a lot.
“So a lot of the development is about learning for the future,” the Briton concluded.
