Mercedes conquering the West in America

Far from the turmoil experienced in Qatar, with the clash between Lewis Hamilton and George Russell from the first round at Losail, Mercedes Benz wants to start his American weekend with optimism. The performance of number 63 in the Persian Gulf, where he managed to move up to 4th place from last position in the second round, gave confidence to the men and women of Toto wolff.

For the Texas round, Andrew Shovlin, director of track engineering at Mercedes, assures that the W14s should be there in Austin, for example taking the pace shown in Qatar.

“We expected the car to run pretty well, commented the British engineer in reference to the Qatar GP. We had the Sprint Race to see the pace of the car, so that was really encouraging. The pace of free practice was also good. We had a good indication that this was going to work well. This circuit suited our car much better than Suzuka, the previous race. 

Mercedes wants to play for the podium… but is wary of McLaren

If he admits that there persists “big question” in the Mercedes camp regarding the exact hierarchy on the Circuit of the Americas, Andrew Shovlin nevertheless hopes to see his two drivers fight for the places of honor... while being wary of the McLaren, very efficient recently.

“It’s a very different circuit. This is an aggressive tarmac, where it is very easy to overheat the tires and where our concern will likely be on high speed performance, explains the director of track engineering. It's there that Red Bull and McLaren seem particularly strong. »

“However, there are a lot of low speed corners and in Qatar we were very good in low speed corners, he adds. It's hard to know exactly where we're going to shine, but our goal is to go there and hopefully fight for a podium. We had a very good chance of putting both cars on the podium in Qatar, but hopefully we will be fighting for the podium in Austin. »

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