Andrew Shovlin on asymmetric chassis settings

Andrew Shovlin, Chief Race Engineer at Mercedes, spoke on the Sky Sports channel about the features of tuning cars for the Spanish leg of the championship. The bottom line is that these settings are not completely symmetrical.

Andrew Shovlin: “This circuit is unusual in that all the right-hand corners here are very fast and the left-hand corners are slow and medium fast, and accordingly one has to take into account when setting up the car that it behaves differently in different corners. .

For example, for a wheel that is in a fast corner, it makes sense to choose a slightly smaller camber angle, and also with chassis settings, the left and right sides of the car are adjusted slightly differently – this can be compared to a seat with shorter legs on one side than on the other.

Due to the asymmetrical settings, it is possible to achieve that the behavior of the car is more nervous in some situations and more stable in others. You can even allow a slight lateral roll of the car – you don’t need it to be completely level on the track.

The main thing to remember is that when you win in one respect, you inevitably lose something in the other, and this line is very thin, so you often have to make compromises, for example, to achieve a faster passage of a high speed right turn, even if you lose something in the slow left turn.

When we talk about our new products, although we have already introduced them in Monaco, the city circuit is far from the best “barometer” of their effectiveness, and Barcelona is considered a classic testing ground for a car. We usually prefer to wait for the Spanish Grand Prix to get a more accurate picture of the balance of power, and teams tried to time the premieres of upgraded vehicles at this stage.

So let’s see how the updated W14 performs here, but hope we managed to improve the overall efficiency of the chassis, particularly by increasing the level of downforce. Hopefully we can improve both in average speed and fast corners.”