Mercedes baffles Red Bull’s “strange” F1 wing choice

The twisty Hungaroring circuit had expected that it would perfectly exploit the strengths of the Red Bull RB16B chassis.

However, Mercedes turned the tables on its main title rival – Lewis Hamilton took pole position and then recovered from a wrong strategy call to finish third on the road.

Mercedes didn’t immediately know why it showed such strong pace over the Hungarian weekend, but was intrigued by Red Bull’s wing selection.

The world championship team feared that Red Bull could be unbeatable if it opts for its version with the highest downforce – with Mercedes now using its extreme version on many tracks.

Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin said, “We thought this was a track that should suit them” [Red Bull].

“The other thing that always worries us when we get to a max downforce track is that we often run around on our max downforce wing and then bring it out for the Monacos and for this place.

“But maybe they couldn’t make up for that. You said goodbye to it on Saturday and it seems strange to us that you would ever drive anything other than your largest rear wing here.

“We’re not admitting why they are making decisions for this car, but it could be that they just struggled to get enough front end on the big wing and they fell for the smaller one.”

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Mercedes would like to take a closer look at why its form was better than Red Bull last weekend, as it appears to have increased performance both on the straights and in the corners.

“We’ll have to see that in the next few days,” Shovlin said. “To be honest, we have seen some pretty minor developments now.

“We had the update kit at Silverstone and it looks like it did a useful job for us. But then the car worked well in terms of tire temperatures and we had a pretty good balance with it.

“But to be honest, we are surprised ourselves. I mean, it’s a pleasant surprise, but we were surprised that we had that lead over pole position, for example. ”