Andrew Shovlin answered fans’ questions

After the Monaco Grand Prix, in which the Mercedes drivers took 5th and 7th place, Andrew Shovlin, the team’s chief racing engineer, answered questions from fans.

Question: Why was the new front wing only fitted to George Russell’s car?
Andrew Shovlin: We will fully evaluate the racing qualities of this wing in Montreal, and normally there should be three: one for each car, and a spare in case of accidents.

But we don’t produce a batch of three copies at the same time, we produce them consecutively, but one was already ready and we were able to take it to Monaco.

Some time ago our riders said: “Why do we always wait for the complete set to arrive? Why don’t we place the new part on at least one machine first?”

And we agreed with them, considering the situation the team is in, because we need to improve the results, and for this it is important to study and collect information, so it is even nice when cars in two different configurations meet the participate in the race. We agreed that we would try out the new wing as soon as the first one was ready, and they were happy with that.

However, a difficult question had to be resolved: who would get the wing? And Lewis himself then suggested that George receive this grand piano in Monaco. In the future we will still have races where we have one copy of a certain part, and then another racer will receive it. Overall, Lewis made our decision easier.

Question: And is the team happy with how this wing performed in Monaco?
Andrew Shovlin: To be honest, teams hardly bring any technical innovations to Monaco, and there is a reason for that: the speeds on this circuit are at a very low level, the configuration of the city ring is very specific, the straights are short, so it’s difficult to really judge something there.

However, all the information we have gathered confirms that the wing is working properly, which allowed us to improve the efficiency of the car in the sense that the W15 made a very favorable impression on George. He felt this was another step in the right direction.

We will get more information in Montreal, but it is especially useful to test new products on a circuit like Barcelona.

Question: On Friday George complained about vibrations in the car – what was causing it?
Andrew Shovlin: They were connected to the steering system. For example, this was clearly visible on Friday when braking for the chicane after the tunnel. George simply couldn’t keep the steering wheel in his hands, which made braking difficult and also obscured vision.

When we prepare the cars for the Monaco circuit, we increase the steering angle of the front wheels to allow the car to go through the narrow Loews hairpin, where the speed is very slow and the steering wheels have to be turned at a greater angle than normal. usual.

We do not make a completely new steering rack for this, but simply shorten the steering rods. Then, with the same movement of the rack, the wheels rotate through a larger angle. And it seems that this small change in geometry caused the problem. But on Saturday we managed to make some changes to the steering system so that George had no problems in both the third practice session and qualifying.

Question: Why did Lewis and George start on hard tires when there is a good chance in Monaco that the race will be stopped by red flags?
Andrew Shovlin: The race was indeed interrupted by red flags at the very beginning, although the chances of this happening on the first lap are still slim. But starting on the hard tires had its advantage: if the red flags had come later in the race, for example between laps 40 and 60, we would have been in a very favorable position.

Because the top four drivers would probably fight each other, and their pit stop decisions would be linked, and we didn’t think anything could threaten us, and we were confident that we could break away from Yuki Tsunoda. In such a situation we could stay on the track and wait for the possible appearance of red flags.

In such a scenario there was a possibility that our drivers would have taken 1st and 3rd place – Max Verstappen, who also started on hard tires, would have been in the top three. And if the race had been interrupted by red flags at a late stage, we would have responded.

When we considered a different scenario, where red flags appeared already on the first lap, it was clear that we would not lose any ground due to the speed difference between our cars and Yuki Tsunoda’s VCARB 01. As you saw, this is exactly what happened during the race.

When the race restarted, in George’s case we were able to reach the finish on a set of Medium tyres, although initially we didn’t know if this would be possible. But Monaco is a circuit where a driver can take good care of his tires. Simply put, when starting on Hard tires there was a chance to show very good results, and in the worst case the results of the race would not be much different from the scenario in which both cars would have had Medium tires.

Question: Was there a misunderstanding between Lewis and the team, which prevented him from getting ahead of Max Verstappen due to the tactic of “cutting” (an earlier pit stop)?
Andrew Shovlin: We have to start with the fact that initially we didn’t think at all that the tactics of an earlier pit stop would give us the chance to stay ahead of Max. The reality was that if we had called Lewis to make a pit stop – and there was no one following us closely, and the track behind his car was clear – Red Bull would not have made their pit stop unless they had the chance had to stop. there for us.

We reasoned as follows: Lewis will make a pit stop, then he will overtake Max on fresh tires and be able to put pressure on him, because Verstappen will stay on track and will drive on worn tires. In general, we did not think that all this would somehow affect the situation in the race, but we implemented such tactics, taking into account the unlikely scenario that George would have problems with tires and not be able to reach the finish on this set of tires.

In this case, by using such tactics we simply hedged our bets. But they didn’t act in the best way because they didn’t tell Lewis to show the maximum possible pace in the exit round. Verstappen was also given the opportunity to make a pit stop and it eventually turned out that he returned to the track ahead of Lewis and drove behind George on new tires, which was also not an ideal situation.

But as you could see there wasn’t much risk for Russell to lose his position as he managed to save his tires and drove safely to the finish. But it is absolutely clear that we could have been more careful in terms of informing the riders. In fact, one of our considerations was that Lewis, after switching to new tyres, could get an extra bonus point for the best lap, and he really succeeded.