Mercedes downplayed its chances of winning the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix over the weekend due to Red Bull F1’s superiority in high-speed corners.
F1 is going to Imola for the second round of the 2021 season. Mercedes and Red Bull are expected to be embroiled in yet another battle of the titans for victory.
Lewis Hamilton prevailed at the season opener at the Bahrain Grand Prix, using Mercedes’ aggressive strategy while defending himself rigorously against Max Verstappen.
Due to the strong winds in Bahrain, Mercedes technical director Andrew Shovlin believes the season opener will not be representative for the rest of 2021.
“Bahrain is quite an outlier. It’s very hard on the rear tires and it’s very windy here, ”said Shovlin. “We had winds of 30 to 40 km / h, which is pretty much the upper end of what you see in a normal racing season.
“We definitely hope this isn’t one of our best tracks because we’ve had a tough time. I think we got the car in a decent window in the end, but it was terribly hard work and when we look at Red Bull through testing and training, their car worked really well and at no point did it look weak. “
On the subject of matching items
Shovlin expects Red Bull to maintain the performance advantage in the next two races at Imola and Portimao as the RB16B does well at high speeds.
So hopefully we’ll find tracks that suit us more, but looking at Imola and Portimao I don’t think we’re good enough at high speed and there are plenty of those in Imola and Portimao and that’s one area where they have an advantage for us right now, ”added Shovlin.
“How do we think? We still don’t believe we have the best car, but neither do we believe we got the best out of the package. When you’re designing the car there are a lot of areas that you want to take advantage of the power and some of them we think didn’t do everything they should.
On the subject of matching items
“So we’ll work pretty hard to get the car out of the box in the next few races. But I think it’s going to be difficult and there are elements on these tracks that are moving us in the right direction, but we’re struggling with the tail here in Bahrain and these tracks are a bit easier in that regard, but like I said it’s high speed something we wouldn’t naively think will be a strength of ours on these routes. “
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