Mercedes still searching for answers on why it was “rubbish” through high-speed corners in Dutch GP

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin rated the team’s pace through Zandvoort’s high-speed corners as “rubbish” and is looking for answers on its inconsistency between both stints and drivers in the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix.

After a strong start to the Zandvoort weekend, with George Russell taking pole and victory in the sprint race, Mercedes dropped behind McLaren’s Lando Norris, who secured pole and victory in the grand prix.

While Mercedes still took 2-3 in qualifying and the race, with Kimi Antonelli getting the better of team-mate Russell in the race to extend his championship lead to 59 points, the team was at a loss on why its early pace didn’t carry through the weekend relative to its main competition.

“We’ve got a few things on the performance side to try and dig into,” Shovlin said on Mercedes’ Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show. “We’re going to be getting on with that this week and see what we learn. 

“But there were a few corners where we were pretty rubbish, like that combination of [Turns] 7, 8, 9. You could see [it in] the faster-speed [curves]. And it also gives the tyres on the left-hand side of the car a tough time. And we don’t really understand yet fully what’s causing that.

“We’ve got some ideas, but that’s not a problem that we’ve suffered with so far this year. And there’s plenty of circuits that have got kind of continued corners in one direction.

“We were a bit off the pace in the fastest of those [turns]. And then our problems kind of grew a bit as we went through. All the other corners look solid.”

What added to Mercedes’ confusion was that minimal changes were made to the cars between the sprint race and grand prix, as well as during the race itself. While Shovlin accepts a level of expected pace deviation per tyre compounds and life, seeing each driver suffer at different times during the grand prix left Mercedes uncertain about the cause.

“We didn’t change the car. We obviously had different compounds at different stages. But again, we need to understand a bit,” he said.

“George’s first stint was a bit lacklustre compared to his later ones. And then with Kimi, first stint was good, and then dropped a bit on the second, dropped a bit more on the third, a bit came back on the third. It wasn’t like we were playing around with electronic settings or up and down on flap angles. And for him, the balance of the car was quite different stint on stint. 

“The two drivers, normally they report similar things with a car at the end of the race. Both of them, their perception of the balance, and probably the reality is George had a more understeery car, Kimi had a more oversteery car. If we look at how they were set up, we don’t yet know quite why we got such a big difference. 

“So, though, really good to have a strong point-scoring weekend when we weren’t at our best in terms of performance. It was actually good fun, sat on the pitwall and having to make decisions in a hurry. I think the whole team enjoyed that and rose to the occasion. And it was definitely a good result, given where we were. 

“But yeah, a bit of head-scratching to do over the next few days.”

As Shovlin pointed out, Mercedes still picked up its second-highest points score as a team this season – 46 points, only behind the 55 points it notched up at the Chinese GP – granted both were sprint race weekends with more points on offer.

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– The Autosport.com Team