© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes’ Toto Wolff and Andrew Shovlin look ahead at the Brazilian Grand Prix and say they will “give it all and try to fight back”.
Mercedes was no match for Red Bull in Mexico, on a track that was always expected to suit the Austrian team. Unfortunately, the next circuit in Brazil is also considered a ‘Red Bull track’.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, however, believes his team can “be closer to Red Bull” than they were in Mexico.
“We leave Mexico – the circuit we probably regarded as one of the worst ones for us – and we go to Brazil which hasn’t been much better in the past,” the Austrian said.
“But we believe we can have a solid car and be closer to Red Bull than we were here. I hope we can break the pattern because it has been a Red Bull track.
“We are going to give it all and try to fight back,” Wolff concluded.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says there will be swings in performance in the remaining four races.
“It’s difficult because normally this far into the season you see the performance settle down a bit and the swings are still big,” Shovlin explained.
“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.
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“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.”
However, Shovlin expects Mercedes and Red Bull to be closer in Brazil.
“The weather inherently is very unstable there. You can have 50-degree track one day and it can be a washout the next.
“I think 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 normally run to their max downforce wing.
“But for us that’s the one that we run normally, 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,” concluded the Briton.
