Shovlin: ‘In a cost cap, hard to launch a competitive car'
F1 News
Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ engineering director gave an insight to why it is so hard to catch Red Bull at the moment, and why the teams behind can only fight for P2 in the Constructors’ Championship, underlining the importance of launching a car early on rather than trying to catch up.
"The way the rules are, if you launch a competitive car in a cost cap, it is quite difficult for teams to catch up," Shovlin started to explain the difficulty of reaching Red Bull in terms of car performance.
"If you've got a competitive car, you don't need to be throwing updates at it week in, week out. They started in a very, very good place. And the fact is, our wind tunnel resource is not very different to theirs, it's not very different to Ferrari's. So, that initial performance advantage you start with, and it has come down over the year, but when you look at how big it was in Bahrain and Jeddah, it's always difficult to shut that down in terms of the championship," the Briton summarised.
Aston Martin and McLaren improving with Mercedes engines
Both Aston Martin and McLaren have made a big leap this season, with Fernando Alonso and Lando Norris securing podium finishes over the course of 2023. Shovlin said this can definitely help their efforts, seeing that their engine works well.
"It's encouraging because we know that the engines are obviously doing a good job in those cars. We're working hard to try and move forward. I think the step McLaren made was pretty impressive. You can see that they've changed a fair bit on their car. But for us, we do need to close that gap to Red Bull. We're still developing the car. Whether or not we could find the sort of half a second that they look to have found, I don't know. That would be a stretch target."