Shovlin: It will be more difficult for us in Canada than in Barcelona

In Barcelona, ​​Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished together on the podium for the first time this season, which was the best result for Mercedes. In the traditional analysis of the stage’s results, the team’s lead race engineer, Andrew Shovlin, answered questions from the fans.

Q: Was Mercedes’ speed in Barcelona the result of the track characteristics matching the car, or is it the result of the introduction of new products?
Andrew Schovlin: Probably both statements are true. The fact is that the novelties worked perfectly on the fast track in Barcelona. Probably our car would look good even without updates, because there are suitable fast tracks for it, on which the main load falls on the front tires. We managed to find a good balance and show good pace in the race.

Next week in Montreal we have a very different type of track with slow corners and a lot of straights to the ground, so we expect more problems. We don’t believe we can compete with Red Bull – the team is preparing to fight with Ferrari, Aston Martin and possibly Alpine.

Q: How painful was the collision between George and Lewis in qualifying and what will the team do to avoid this in the future?
Andrew Schovlin: Let’s keep it simple: the driver is trying to get behind the car in front of him for his attempt, to get a higher speed limit on the straight through the slipstream. This allows you to gain more speed and gain back a tenth of a second or even a little more. He then overtakes the car that completed the lap in a straight line and drives on an empty track for the remainder of the lap.

In the case of George and Lewis, the situation was quite simple: they both tried to keep enough distance behind Carlos Sainz that he scattered them on the starting line. George waited for Sainz, who is on his fast lap, to overtake him to gain acceleration at the start of the attempt. However, George was unaware that Lewis was directly behind him.

Normally in Barcelona we concentrate on race preparation and don’t worry too much if something goes wrong in qualifying, but after what happened on Saturday we will meet at base to discuss how we can improve communication between the team and riders can change to avoid confusion without giving them the whole picture.

Q: In Friday practice it seemed that the car had no speed, but on Sunday things went wrong. What were you able to do for this?
Andrew Schovlin: On Friday we had problems with a fast lap due to overheating. The balance also turned out to be not quite right, but on a long series of laps we looked quite confident.

What changed on Sunday? Usually on Friday night we work a lot with a simulator driven by Mick Schumacher. He tried different settings, we analyzed them and on Saturday morning we tried the ones that seemed best to us on the car. We actually made progress on Saturday, but it was especially nice to see how fast the car was in the race. We more or less got the optimal balance, the tires didn’t wear and our riders were able to overtake.

George’s performance made a particularly strong impression: he started from the same row as Sergio Perez and finished ahead of him. Clear progress, which was the result of the work of the whole team, especially Mika in the evening on the simulator.

Q: Lewis’s car was damaged on the first lap after the Lando Norris incident?
Andrew Schovlin: In that episode, we were very lucky, because the only part that suffered damage was the rim, which actually has no effect on the speed of the car. At the pit stop we put a wheel with a new disc on Lewis and everything went back to normal.

Lewis is very lucky. As soon as we saw on the telemetry that everything was OK, he was able to attack with full force.

Q: Have you approved the Soft-Medium-Soft strategy before launch?
Andrew Schovlin: We had several options and Soft-Medium-Soft was pretty low on the list. We leaned more towards the strategy of two pit stops, but did not rule out one stop. At the end of Friday we didn’t have enough data to understand how hard tires will behave during the race.

After the launch, we noticed that some of the cars on the Hard struggled to get up through traffic, which concerned us. At the same time, we had enough information about the performance of the Medium tires, which we collected in the second training session on Friday. We knew it was a good compound and when we switched to it we found that it warms up quickly and offers good grip.

We already made the second pit stop when the remaining number of laps allowed us to drive the last part on Soft. In fact, our strategy changed during the race and our strategists did a fantastic job processing all the information so that we could make the right decision.

Q: How did you react when George asked the team and the rain?
Andrew Schovlin: At first we were puzzled, because we hadn’t expected rain in the fifth corner and didn’t see anything on the weather radar. Then he got in touch again and said a little bit of rain continues to fall, but the car is behaving well on the track. If George hadn’t realized it wasn’t rain, but sweat on his helmet visor, we would have been left wondering where the rain was coming from, and why only George sees it, while other riders don’t notice.

Q: How satisfied is the team with the result and what can we expect from the race in Canada?
Andrew Schovlin: We are very happy that we were in the spotlight and achieved a double podium. The team has had some tough races lately, so it was nice to score a lot of points and see both our drivers back on the podium after the break.

What do we expect from the race in Montreal? As I said, we expect a return to the situation a few stages ago when we were fighting on equal footing with Ferrari and Aston Martin. Alpine has now joined this group. An exciting battle awaits us, in which we must pay attention to every little thing in order to gain an advantage. The density is so high that it’s easy to get both second and tenth, as the difference between the positions is only a few tenths.

We are preparing for a more exciting race, but at the same time understand that it will be more difficult for us in Canada than last Sunday in Barcelona.