After completing the first practice session of the 2023 season, Mercedes lead race engineer Andrew Shovlin commented on the results. Lewis Hamilton showed the 10th fastest time, George Russell – 11th, and the team expected to be able to add new tires by the end of the session, but these calculations did not come true.
Andrew Shovlin: “After testing we knew we were a bit behind, especially from Red Bull Racing. In practice, the first set of laps went as we expected, and when we went to the next set, changing tires, we couldn’t find out much. We thought we could add, but it didn’t, and now we need to figure out why.
But if we remember the tests, then we were not very happy with the behavior of the car on medium hardness tires, and with softer compositions everything went much better. Today we plan to work with soft tires in the second session.
It seems that the new rear wing has done a good job. We wanted to try it out last week, but it wasn’t ready yet. However, the base team did everything they could to get it before the start of the race weekend.
The most important thing is that we got rid of the pitching of the car and we can set up the car the way we want, so the track work is much smoother than last year. Although the balance of the car as a whole still needs to be worked on. The concept of a chassis with narrow side pontoons remained the same, because if we decided to copy someone else’s solutions, we would inevitably roll back before continuing.
This weekend and the first few races we will analyze the car’s behavior as the team prepares some new products, particularly related to the design of the side pontoons. In any case, there are many aspects to review, but if we really managed to eliminate such an unpleasant phenomenon as buildup, then we will develop the solutions that made it possible to achieve this and move forward.
Of course this has to be done carefully, bearing in mind that we have a limited budget, but over the past year the team has gained a lot of experience and learned to think carefully about their actions.
In fact, the aerodynamic research you do when you’re trying to solve a problem is not the most important cost when compared to the cost of manufacturing new components. But at this stage of the season, the most important thing is to understand what positions we are in with this car, what its weaknesses are, and how to fully exploit the potential of the W14. We have no other choice, we just have to persevere, keep working and try to catch up.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
