F1 News
Mercedes draws hope from FIA directive: 'Maybe everyone has to do that'
- GPblog.com
After an extremely disappointing start to the season, Mercedes showed improvement in the run-up to the summer break. However, the team is struggling to catch up, as the Belgian Grand Prix weekend showed. The team's engineers are discovering new weaknesses at every circuit, reports Auto, Motor und Sport.
One thing is for sure: the W13 will not have a place of honour in the museum of silver arrows. Lewis Hamilton has said he "certainly won't miss" the car, while Toto Wolff is finally starting to realise that the team may have to rethink the concept it has held onto for so long.
W13 has too many weaknesses
Whereas Mercedes came out on top in the Hungarian GP and started to believe in victory again, the opposite was true in Spa. The hardest blow came on Saturday, when both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell had to concede about two seconds to fastest man Max Verstappen. On Sunday, the W13's pace looked better, but that picture was partly distorted by Ferrari's high tyre degradation.
The German team's performance remains highly volatile, partly due to the fact that the car only performs when it is low to the ground. At Spa, the ride height had to be adjusted and the W13's pace suffered considerably as a result, the team's engineers report. At the same time, they see Red Bull Racing suffering the least from this of all F1 teams, something the engineers attribute to the rival team's long experience with aerodynamics.
"Zandvoort and Singapore are undulating tracks. That could mean that everyone has to go up with the ground clearance," the Mercedes engineers say. In that case, the German team might yet benefit from the FIA's new technical directive, which so far has not delivered the results it was hoping for.