© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin and James Vowles explain why Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas struggled to control the W12 during pre-season testing.
Mercedes didn’t have an easy time during 2021 pre-season testing. Not only did the team lose a lot of time due to technical issues, but the car also seemed to handle poorly, which led to several spins on the track.
The combined issues led to Mercedes completing the least amount of laps in testing. The team’s Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained some of the issues in Mercedes’ testing debrief video.
“The wind made it tricky,” Shov said.
“When the wind is behind the car you lose a lot of downforce because effectively the airspeed is reduced. So some corners where the wind was behind, it was prone to doing that.
“And then also the tyres are quite easy to overheat on that circuit and if you start sliding. You tend to lose grip and it gets worse. So, there are a few problems.
“Now, importantly we could see that some of our competitors weren’t struggling in the same way as us, so we need to put quite a focus on understanding why the rear end was a bit weak, how we can get it more stable and predictable.
“That work is going on now. Hopefully, when we get to the race weekend it won’t be so difficult for the drivers because they were having to work pretty hard to do the lap times that they were doing.”
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The team’s Motorsport Strategy Director James Vowles reiterated Shovlin’s earlier statement that Red Bull appears to be quicker than Mercedes.
“We are fortunate enough to have a lot of footage available to us, and it was pretty evident from that the car was handling poorly,” Vowles said.
“Conversely, the Red Bull, in fact, looked what we would call planted, but it was a very stable car especially through the last sector of the lap.
“I think that’s a fair observation. It was visible to the outside and I would say the lap times mirrored that as well.
“[We have] Huge amounts of data available to us and now a long journey ahead to try and understand what was causing that.”
