Mercedes Formula 1 technical director James Allison says that his team can take “no pleasure” from a Chinese GP weekend during which the tricky W15 simply wasn’t good enough.
George Russell finished sixth and Lewis Hamilton was ninth in Sunday’s main event as the Brackley outfit was outperformed by Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari, although second place for Hamilton in the Saturday sprint provided some encouragement.
Nevertheless overall it was a disappointing event for the Mercedes team, which is bringing an upgrade package to the upcoming Miami GP.
“It’s no pleasure at all to be taken from a weekend which even though competently executed and well driven by both guys, no pleasure at all when the hardware itself is not where it needs to be or should be,” said Allison in a team video.
“That’s of course the challenge that we face in the coming races, to try and move both the setup of the car and also the pieces that we bring to the car so that that’s improved.
“We’ve got upgrade packages coming to the car, but also components that we hope will rectify the underlying balance that is causing us difficulty.
“Much as it’s painful to talk in this way after a weekend like this, I just have to remember that there’ll be races in the future when we’ve executed those things, when we’re back more on the front foot, and when we’re progressing where the pleasure of talking about it will be massive. And that day can’t come soon enough.”
Allison said that the team continued to learn lessons about the difficult W15 in China.
“Every weekend you go to you learn things,” he said. “It’s one of the truisms of F1, it is a learning race, and although you have a factory full of tools, you have a load of computational power, a load of people who are thinking about it, there is no place to learn about the car better than with the car at the track, doing what it’s designed to do.
“We head from China, one of the most famously front-limited circuits, to Miami, a track that is more in the rear-limited end of the spectrum.
“And our challenge will be to make sure we don’t try and replay China at a Miami that is a very, very different beast, and wants different things from the car than China will.”
Intriguingly Allison says that the team has realised that the best way to make use of the new sprint weekend parc ferme rules is to take setup risks for the shorter event, and potentially then rein things in for qualifying and the main race.
“We face the enjoyment of another sprint weekend with this second go of having two bites of the cherry,” he said. “And we definitely learned during this weekend that if you’re going to be ambitious, be ambitious in the sprint race, and then tune it down for the main race rather than the opposite way around.
“And hopefully we’ll land a car in a better place, that the upgrades that we’re going to bring to Miami serve us well in a grid that in qualifying at least is really close.
“Around the part of the battle we’re fighting a few hundredths can make a difference sometimes, and a couple of tenths would make all the difference in the world. So looking forward to seeing how that all plays out.”
Adam Cooper F1 