Mercedes French Grand Prix
Mercedes French Grand Prix
From the mid of the 2010s all up to 2020, when non fans of the sport thought of Formula 1, they would immediately think of 2 things. One would be Michael Schumacher for the obvious reasons, and 2 would be Mercedes because of how dominant they’ve been since the dawn of the hybrid era. But once this season came around, that would not be the case as the team up till now is still wrestling to get the W13 to even be on the same level as Red bull and Ferrari let alone dominate them.
But with how the past few races went for the silver arrows team, are they now set up to have a better 2nd half of the season? And will the relationship between 7-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and his newcomer teammate George Russell turn sour once the team figures out the W13? We’ll you’re going to have to stick around to find out. But before we get going, consider subscribing to the channel as we upload 4 videos at the minimum every week, to keep you updated on the latest happenings in the F1 space. Now that’s out of the way, let’s get into it…
For the most part, Mercedes has been a respectable team this season bagging podium finishes whenever the front runners, specifically Red Bull and Ferrari flame out by their own efforts. But these past 2 races have been different for the Silver Arrows team, the team looked it’s best 2 weeks ago at Silverstone where Lewis Hamilton looked like he had a real chance of winning the race.
And this past weekend, both their drivers arguably had the pace to qualify in the top 3 if it weren’t for their huge crashes. These 2 crashes meant a lengthy repair job for the Mercedes engineer which the team believed hampered the team’s potential performance both in the Sprint and race day. In Mercedes technical director Mike Elliot’s words:
“When you crash two cars it’s always going to make for a very difficult weekend from then onwards. We’ve done quite a lot of damage to the cars so, we’ve broken both floors, we’ve broken both rear wings, we damaged quite a lot of suspension, on Lewis’s car we also damaged the front wing and done some cosmetic damage to the chassis. So, damage that we can repair but not repair over a weekend. That meant completely rebuilding Lewis’s car from scratch. It meant also trying to build one floor out of two. And it also meant we were compromised on George’s rear wing because we only had one complete spare rear wing that we chose to fit to Lewis’s car because he was going to have to come through the field, which meant that George had to fit a rear wing which was probably not the ideal level of downforce, it was a bit too much downforce for that circuit. Having rebuilt the cars we also had to dial in the setup again and you’ve got very limited time in FP2 to do that and that was always going to be another compromise, and then finally having damaged two cars as badly as we did on Friday, the drivers are now in a position where if we damage them in the sprint race we may well be in a position where we couldn’t race on Sunday. So, all of that has to be factored in and all of that sort of compromises your weekend.”
But even with a car basically made out of scraps, the team would make the car reliable enough for both their drivers which would be enough for Lewis Hamilton to benefit from Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz having to retire his car after an engine failure and earn him another podium finish. Team boss Toto Wolff would be asked about the team’s performance to which he would reply with:
“It’s just that we are missing a few tenths here and there, I think we’ve halved the gap over the last few months, we understand better, but we’re still third, fourth – we’re somewhere right in the middle of nowhere. But I would say if I tried to pick the positives, in race pace today, if we would have – which we didn’t – started right in the top six, probably we could’ve held on to Max [Verstappen] and not been so far away. For sure [the qualifying crashes] didn’t help, because even though you can set the car up and measure the car… it puts you on the wrong foot straight from the get-go. So, we didn’t expect to be really competitive here because of the nature of the track, it wasn’t a happy place for us in the past, so I’m okay. We just need to continue to grind away.”
And when asked about the team’s chances heading into the French Grand Prix, Toto would say:
“Paul Ricard should be okay. It’s a smooth circuit, a little bit like Silverstone, fast corners, and on paper at least it looks like we can have a good performance there.”
The team historically has always had good performances in France and their race pace up to this point has been respectable and consistent so that would not be an issue. But what most experts say Mercedes has to improve on is their qualifying pace. On 3 separate occasions, the Silver arrows team looked like they had a legitimate shot at winning it all or at least making it hard for both Red Bull and Ferrari.
But on each of those opportunities, they would fall short. Specifically, Hamilton who would have to fight back through the field on all 3 occasions due to his subpar performance in qualifying. The first occasion was in Spain where Hamilton was knocked out of the race after making contact with Haas driver Kevin Magnussen all the while being the faster car that day compared to George Russell.
The second would be Silverstone where Lewis looked like he had the pace to really contend with both Ferrari drivers, but again a lackluster outing in qualifying and excellent first launch derailed by a race restart. And then the latest would be in Austria where both drivers would get into entanglements with the other midfield cars that derailed them from making any real impressions on Ferrari and Red bull who were battling up ahead.
So, it’s safe to say that for Mercedes to have a legitimate shot on Sunday, the team must take advantage of Saturday’s qualifying to give them the best chance of winning the French Grand Prix. It’s one thing to have a consistent and reliable race pace, but when you have to start all the way back, winning it all after fighting through the midfield will be a tall order for any driver to fulfill and that sadly what has been the case for both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton as of late.
But, even with a string of subpar performances in qualifying, Red Bull’s team boss Christian Horner has gone on record saying that even though we’re already at the midway point of the season, it is still too early to count Mercedes out saying:
“There’s such a long way to go and we’ve seen such big swings in points. Ferrari have a great car and competitive drivers, and Mercedes…I wouldn’t discount them from the championship just yet, so there’s a long, long way to go and an awful lot of racing, and a lot of points available. We are only at the halfway point, so anything is possible. We don’t rule out or underestimate any of our opponents. They’ve won the constructors’ championship for the last eight consecutive seasons, so we’d be fairly foolhardy to underestimate them.”
And while Christian is showing some respect to Mercedes, Toto would be the opposite further accusing Red Bull of bending the rules the FIA had laid out for the season. These comments would come after Toto was asked about how the FIA intends to fix the porpoising and why some other teams aka Red Bull had not been suffering from the phenomena as much as the other teams on the grid:
“Some teams have boards that disappear when the car hits the floor. The reason for having the planks is to reduce the wear and tear on the floor you can get. And if a plank can miraculously disappear into the floor, that’s clearly against the rules. The second thing is a board that can wobble or moves more than the tolerance allows. The tolerance is one millimeter (2mm, editor’s note) and even if a board moves several millimeters in the car, it’s obvious that you gain in performance there too,”
After these comments, Toto would then conclude his statements by saying that he thinks that everyone will finally be on the same playing field once the race calendar hits the Belgian Grand Prix as the new directives will take away any advantage the other teams may have benefitted on before the directive was required.
It’ll be interesting to see if Toto’s accusations really is true, and if so then Red Bull may be in big trouble. But what do you think? Will Mercedes be a threat to both Ferrari and Red Bull after the summer break? Or will the new directives actually put Mercedes at a disadvantage? Let us know in the comment section below, and as always don’t forget to like and subscribe to the channel if you haven’t!
