Shovlin: It’s hard to predict anything before the stage in Baku

Mercedes expects to face certain difficulties in Baku due to the unique city circuit, but according to Andrew Shovlin, the team’s chief race engineer, everything is being done to perform as well as possible in all races in the latter part of the season.

“In the case of the Baku circuit, it was always very difficult to predict what positions you would be in there,” Shovlin admitted. “It is quite an unusual city ring because it has a very narrow, twisty and very slow second sector, but after that there is a very long straight.

The circuit requires the car’s aerodynamics to be tuned to produce a relatively low level of downforce, which you wouldn’t normally want in slow corners, but the long straight means you have to do exactly that.

In addition, there are many possible incidents this weekend that will affect the course of the race, because on such a circuit a driver can easily make a mistake, which will lead to the appearance of a safety car, and this will confuse things for everyone.

But this year there is another problem: the balance of power at each circuit could be such that at least three, if not four, teams will be within one or two tenths of each other. This makes it very difficult to predict what the qualifying results will be and who will be able to set what pace in the race.

We expect McLaren to go fast, but lately we have seen that Ferrari has also improved and we can never write off Red Bull.

Our team hopes to start the last part of the season in the same spirit as we have performed recently, namely: claiming victories in some races and showing good results in qualifying.

All our efforts now are focused on making the car perform as efficiently as possible, so that at the end of each weekend we can be satisfied with a job well done and hopefully win some trophies.”