Mercedes imagine their automobile’s bouncing downside returned on the Belgian Grand Prix due to how they set it up, and never because of the newest improve they launched.
Each drivers complained the W14 bounced excessively through the race at Spa-Francorchamps.
“We undoubtedly had an quantity of bouncing this weekend,” chief technical officer Mike Elliott admitted in a video issued by the team. “Each drivers have been telling us that and we are able to see it within the knowledge.
“We may additionally see bouncing on the opposite vehicles. I feel a few of it’s the nature of the circuit at Spa, in truth, we had large quantities of bouncing final yr, as did most groups.
“When it comes to efficiency, it undoubtedly affected the efficiency of the automobile as a result of it impacts the drivers’ means to extract the utmost grip from the automobile. It impacts their steadiness and it impacts their means to get their braking factors, et cetera proper. In order that’s undoubtedly one thing we’ll be engaged on for the longer term.”
Mercedes launched the newest improve for his or her automobile final weekend, together with modifications to their flooring and sidepods. Nonetheless the staff suspects it was not this however the automobile’s set-up which prompted their bouncing downside. Because the Belgian Grand Prix was a dash race weekend, they solely had an hour of follow through which to arrange their vehicles, and rain additional compromised their efforts.
“The query we have to ask ourselves is how a lot of it’s simply the circuit we have been at in Spa and the way a lot is it to be present in set-up?” stated Elliott. “As a result of clearly it was a moist race weekend, a weekend the place we now have no dry working up till the purpose we have been truly racing.
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“We’ll additionally take a extremely good take a look at the improve equipment and ensure we’ve not launched bouncing with that. However in the intervening time our perception is it’s most likely a results of set-up or the circuit itself.”
Whereas Lewis Hamilton certified third on the grid for the race, he wasn’t in a position to acquire locations within the race and completed behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc. Elliott admitted the automobile didn’t carry out in addition to anticipated within the grand prix.
“That’s an uncommon factor as a result of typically we’ve bought good tyre degradation and usually we do significantly better within the races than we do in qualifying,” he defined.
“If you take a look at this weekend as an entire, the combined circumstances and the drying tracks that we had meant that qualifying was such that the tempo was altering lap to lap because the monitor dried up. The tyres you have been working on have been altering session to session in order that was most likely extra about what the driving force can get out of the automobile than attending to that kind of good level on the finish of qualifying. Each our drivers did a superb job to soundly navigate via the weekend and put in good laps once they wanted them.
“When it comes to the race tempo, I feel that’s all about degradation and to get the degradation you need, you’ve bought to have the steadiness in precisely the place you need it. For us this weekend, we weren’t there, and I feel that’s only a results of not having dry laps in follow, not having sufficient alternative to get the set-up of the automobile simply the place you need it and comparatively, we ended up with a automobile that wasn’t fairly as properly balanced as possibly a few of our rivals have been.
“In consequence we had extra tyre degradation and due to this fact weren’t actually in a position to extract the race tempo that we want to have seen.”
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