F1 News
Mercedes has work to do: 'That clearly needs a bit of focus'
- GPblog.com
Mercedes had hoped for more in the first two practice sessions after the summer break. In FP2 they finished sixth and eighth, while in FP1 George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and ninth respectively. Andrew Shovlin admits that more speed needs to be found if the team is to take advantage of the fact that Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc are taking grid penalties.
"Quite a messy day with a bit of a rain and a red flag but we were able to get a read on the main issues to work on overnight," Shovlin said in a Mercedes press release. "Our single lap performance clearly needs a bit of focus."
Mercedes has work to do
According to Shovlin, neither driver had a good feeling with the soft tyre and the team therefore struggled to get the tyre up to temperature properly. "There wasn't much useful learning on a long run given the conditions. We had the Hard tyre in the second session which was particularly difficult in the cool and damp but the Medium was working reasonably well in FP1," he continued.
Mercedes are keen to take advantage of the grid penalties of Verstappen and Leclerc, but Shovlin admits the team has some homework to do to achieve this. "Clearly there is an opportunity with the number of cars that are taking penalties, but we do need to find a bit of pace overnight if we are to capitalise on that," said Shovlin.