When Mercedes arguably underperformed in Formula 1’s Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia despite introducing a brand-new floor and bodywork package at Sepang, the team had to figure out its next steps.
The Anglo-German squad eventually opted for split specifications at the next round in Singapore, with George Russell switching back to the previous version, which he had won in Baku with. That was a development the Briton was happy with – and even advocated for – in order to troubleshoot whatever undetected problems the Silver Arrow’s updates might have, given a power-unit penalty was putting him on the back foot anyway.
“Cost cap was part of the reason we ran the back-to-back experiment in Singapore,” deputy team principal Bradley Lord explained on the Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show, “because it was both the fastest way to do the learning with a real world experiment – even though it was a sprint weekend and maybe not ideal test conditions from that point of view – but it was also the most efficient way for us to do it, to take the set of componentry we still had for the previous configuration of the car and roll back George's spec in Singapore in order that we could run old and new alongside each other and start to do that real-world learning, having spotted that some of the behaviours we'd seen in Sepang were not exactly what we predicted or were maybe outside of the window of what we can predict in the wind tunnel and in the simulator.
“It's an ever-present constraint, but it's also a constraint that's there for every team. And it's down to us to make the most of it and deliver the most performance within that.”
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Srinivasa Krishnan
Deputy technical director Simone Resta explained that Mercedes was caught out by Sepang being “quite a different track” to the other circuits on the F1 calendar.
“It’s quite a tough one,” the Italian detailed. “Very different tarmac, very changeable conditions. It can be very hot, but also it can quite quickly rain. The ambient temperature is very high, and it's characterised by very high degradation for the tyres, et cetera.
“I guess it's a bit off the scale in terms of track if compared to the average. Therefore, you are not sure that the evidence on the track there translates exactly one to one in all the other tracks. And we left there with the confidence that we were competitive, because I think we were competitive there. But perhaps we wouldn't see the step forward that we were expecting to see in those particular conditions according to the simulation.
“So we had a doubt. And probably the best way to answer to a doubt is actually to do a test – and do a test as early as possible. Sometimes you might take your time to think about it, when is the best time, et cetera. But just we decided, ‘OK, next race, let's just immediately do a test, see where we are with the package, and get a clear idea about where we are’, and we delivered everything we were expecting.
“George offered his availability to do the test, which was, I think, great. George is always a great team player, and he always thinks great for the team.”
George Russell, Mercedes
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images
Resta revealed that Mercedes did measure more downforce as a result of the upgrade, as expected, but said downforce was not being delivered consistently across every area of the car, which affected its balance – resulting in an even stronger front end than expected.
“Therefore, you need to recentre the window we operate the car,” he continued. “And it's taking some time. And it's taking a time in a weekend that is relatively short, is a sprint weekend, where you run a little bit, you do some comparing, then you're straight into the sprint, you cannot play anymore with the car, and then it's raining in the sprint race, and you're into the main qualifying.
“It's a long weekend from, let's say, clock point of view. But in terms of number of laps and experience, et cetera, it's relatively short. So you need to accelerate as much as possible your learning.”
Interestingly, Mercedes went on to introduce a new front wing in Singapore, which Antonelli used only in the sole free practice session before reverting to the older version.
“As we wanted to accelerate the learning [compared to Russell’s old car spec], we even did a test with the new front wing during P1,” Resta commented. “So in such a short time, we changed many things because our objective was to try to learn as quick as possible for the short and medium term. We wanted to check the new front wing – of course we weren't planning to race it here, but we wanted to check it, compare with the old one, get the data, bring the data home, do the homework and prepare ourselves in the best way for the next event.
“So you need to also to see that as an investment on our future, to gather the data, to gather the understanding, and then at the time to think, simulate, run on the simulator and then move on.”
Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Mercedes
Photo by: Joe Portlock / Getty Images
“And it's worth saying, it was worth our while running that front wing in FP1 as well,” Lord added, “because we learned things that will mean we can hopefully hit the ground running in a better way when we get to Austin with both cars in the updated config and running the new front wing and able to hopefully make the most of that sort of higher peak performance in a way we haven't been able to do as effectively so far.”
But did Mercedes never consider running the new wing during the whole weekend?
“We only had one there,” Lord explained. “We'd sort of rushed it through production, but obviously if you've only got one example, you run the risk of pitlane starts, if you damage things. And so the balance of risk, I didn't favour running it for qualifying or in sprint or the main race, but certainly doing the learning was really useful.
Russell eventually fought to ninth from the back of the Marina Bay grid in Singapore, while Antonelli clinched a podium finish to inch closer to a maiden F1 title.
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