© Steve Etherington for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says Mercedes is treating the Yas Marina Circuit “like a new circuit”.
Last year at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix Max Verstappen managed to win with relative ease. As we approach the final race of the season, Andrew Shovlin gives his opinion on Mercedes’ chances this year.
“It’s a faster lap now so it’s going to be considerably quicker and lead to a faster overall race,” Shovlin explained.
“You’re also going to have a bit of a patchwork quilt of tarmac which changes the balance a bit corner to corner.
“In terms of who holds the advantage, well last year Lewis was [competing] a few days after a bout of COVID, and there’s no way he was performing at his best, it’s not an easy thing to get over.
“Our analysis after that event indicated that we just put the set-up in the wrong place, we had development tyres there, we did work there focusing on those, ironically we’d won the championship and we decided to try and understand the tyres rather than focus on the weekend.
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“We ended up going into the race underprepared and with a car that wasn’t well-balanced.”
The Yas Marina Circuit has been significantly modified since last year, so Mercedes is approaching it “like a new circuit”.
“We’ve had a lot of good races in Abu Dhabi, but going in there we’re worried about the unknowns – there’s lots of new areas of the track, we’ve seen performance swings, tracks we thought we’d be competitive at we weren’t good at all, like Austin.
“[In Saudi Arabia] we’ve seen Red Bull show us a clean pair of heels on a single lap so there’s plenty for us to worry about, and you’ve got the softest tyres, and those can be really tricky on occasion.
“We’re treating it like a new circuit, we know what we need to do, we need to go there and win,” Shovlin concluded.
