At the time, Brackley’s team was still largely a midfielder, and while Nico Rosberg won the Chinese Grand Prix earlier this year, he and teammate Michael Schumacher scored just two podiums for the rest of the season. So the lack of Q3 wasn’t really a big deal at the time.
However, in the hybrid era, this was unprecedented, so 11th place for George Russell and 13th for Lewis Hamilton were a shock to everyone on the team.
As Hamilton’s radio reports show, this is simply the case of a team struggling to raise the temperature in its tires on a cold, humid afternoon that was constantly interrupted by red flags.
Although everyone was facing the same challenge, Mercedes could not cope with a problem that seems to be built into the W13.
“Honestly, we struggled to warm up with this car,” said track engineer Andrew Shovlin after the session.
“And we haven’t reached the bottom. And today was a very painful example of this, when we could not get the mileage, which was long enough to build the temperature to get the tires in the right window.
“We have seen him in all competitions. In Bahrain, it’s not really worth it, and all the other tracks, it was actually a little difficult to qualify. The pace of the race is usually good, I think we demonstrated that we are the third fastest at a competitive pace.
“The problem is that on one lap we seem to be very much in the midfield. And that’s an area we’re working on, but we still don’t fully understand. “
So is this largely an aerodynamic or mechanical problem? Chauvin suggested that the answer was not so clear.
“I don’t think it’s aerodynamic in a very simple sense, because we’re racing pretty well, we’re racing clearly in the middle of the field,” he said.
“In one lap many of the midfielders are better than us. And we wouldn’t say that’s because they have more pressure than we do in one lap. And in the same way, I don’t think it’s going to be kinematics.
“There are things you can do with the car’s specifications to try to have a little more warm-up than the brakes. But this is a relatively subtle effect. As I said, we don’t know if there is anything else about how we adjust the car or how we approach the way we generate heat in the tires.
“But this is an area we have to deal with because it continues to hold us back on Saturday.
Detail of the front brake of the Mercedes W13
Photo: Giorgio Piola
Using brakes to control tire temperature has become more difficult with the 18-inch wheels and the various “cake shapes” and grooves they contain.
This, in turn, makes it difficult for Mercedes to deal with the problem, as traditional methods do not work.
“Before you can get the hot air from the brakes right on the rim,” Shawlin explained. “And you get a very fast heat transfer through most of the tire. The rules were created to make this difficult, and they succeeded.
“As I said, we still need to understand why we can’t even equalize some of the teams in the middle of the net. We know that Red Bull and Ferrari have more pressure now. But we have to be able to present ourselves in the same position we are competing in, which is really the third fastest team. “
Chauvin noted that the team had no problem with Pirelli’s wet and intermediate tires, for which the teams had limited knowledge of Imola, with the exception of some runs on an artificially soaked track during testing in Barcelona. Despite the change in size, they behave similarly to their predecessors.
“The great thing about wet tires is how they handle a number of conditions. How do they go in the dry? And here we will not have a good idea about it.
“But certainly today, with the intermediate conditions for us, the only question was the temperature of the building. We fought in this area. In terms of balance, there is nothing wrong with them, they are very similar in balance with others.
“And George said that if he was much higher in the net, he would not be surprised, he said that the car feels good. We just didn’t have the grip we needed to be quick. “
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
After the session, Hamilton clearly expressed his disappointment, noting: “I don’t think we presented ourselves as a team today. There are things we should have done, but we haven’t done. “
Asked what his pilot meant, Shawlin said it was probably the way the qualifying session was run, with Hamilton wanting to run more laps.
“Louis would like to stay out on one of the runs earlier. And he felt that we were raising the temperature when we decided to go in and get a new set. I think when you look at the end of the session, we can’t help but run longer because of the red flag.
“So, these are two things. One is, could we have conducted the earlier part of the session better? Maybe we could do it. The other problem is just that we can’t seem to put up a tour where other people find it pretty easy. And on a day like today, that will always be a big problem. “
The problem with the warming of the tires runs parallel to the guinea pig, which continues to disappoint Mercedes more than most of its rivals, which means that the team can not run at the optimum ride height.
“Well, to be honest, both are annoying issues right now,” Shovlin admitted. “But in reality, what costs us today is the warm-up.
“I think if we had been able to solve that, we would have been much more successful. The breed limits the potential of the car. But it’s no different than what we’ve had in recent races. “
Guinea pig control was not one of the specific goals of the aviation change package that the team brought to Imola, and the updates were simply designed to improve overall performance.
“It was a normal aviation development,” Shovlin confirmed. “And frankly, we’re working on the problems we have with bouncing individually. The developments we brought here, we were aware that they would not affect this. That is why we focused on these parts.
“But aside from that, we’re still working hard to try to understand, get to the top and allow the rebound. So again, we know that, like warming up, this is another area that is a weakness of this car that we need to fix before we can be competitive. “
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
In addition to all the problems with the chassis, Mercedes is working hard on its drivetrain. It is clear that all three of his rivals have overtaken, if not overtaken, the manufacturer that dominates the hybrid era.
The struggles of Mercedes’ customer teams in early racing have highlighted this, although McLaren has recently climbed the grid. The big challenge is that most PU elements are already frozen by 2025.
“We are constantly analyzing this,” says Shovlin. “There are areas that we think we can improve in terms of deployment management. Now, however, this is a homologated unit. So you can only do things for reliability.
“This does not prevent us from looking at what we can do within the regimes and how we can use them better and whether there is anything more we can gain from the way we deploy the existing regimes.
“But we are not fast enough, and when you are not fast enough, you look for all areas for improvement.
“So the task of the power people is to focus on that and look at every fine-tuning we can do to make a profit. And on the chassis side, we have a lot of different projects right now to try to move on. ”
Can Mercedes dig itself out of its current problems? At the moment, the races are very fast – and with each passing weekend, the chances of Hamilton to cope with the challenge for his eighth title continue to decrease.
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