Mercedes arrived at the Silverstone track with a huge package of upgrades including a modified floor, a new rear wing, reworked sidepods and another front suspension.
The team also anticipated that this track would be better suited to the W13 due to its characteristics, and that seems true judging by Lewis Hamilton’s second position in FP2, behind Carlos Sainz and his Ferrari.
George Russell had a slightly more difficult Friday and finished eighth, but Shovlin was particularly happy with his race pace.
“It seems like we’ve made a step forward, because normally we’re not close to the top on Fridays,” he told Sky F1 . “I also think we should expect a bit more from Ferrari and Red Bull. But our long run work was also quite motivating.”
“Normally we see a gap of half a second, maybe even seven or eight tenths to the fastest teams in the race simulations. And we seemed to be there, so that’s probably a little bit thanks to the circuit too, which suits the car. “.
“We also have a lot to do still, we have a lot of rebound and that complicates the high-speed corners. But I think the updates are going in the right direction.”
Mercedes tends to go down different set-up paths with its two drivers on Fridays, and Shovlin confirmed that they both made their own decisions as the day progressed.
“The cars started out identical,” he noted. “We wanted to try both tyres, the hard and also the medium. George had the hard tire at the start of FP2, and he was suffering from a bit of a lack of grip, which is tricky in these colder conditions.
“And that dropped him back down the grid. But then if you look at his long run, it was going pretty well. Finally they’ve drifted a little bit in terms of their set-up. But like I said, the pace in race simulation was promising in both cars”.
“Over one lap we struggle to get the tire in the correct operating window. And in fact Saturday could be even colder, but it’s only for that lap. This track is also one of those where when you’re confident with the car, you gain a lot of lap time, because in the fast corners you need to know that the rear is not going to move.
Shovlin , on the other hand, acknowledged that the German outfit had learned a valuable lesson about making big changes ahead of qualifying, saying it was unlikely to be repeated. even though the session was in the rain.
“We’ve tried everything over the course of the season and I think what we’ve learned is that making big changes before qualifying is not a great idea. Because if you make a mistake, you penalize both in qualifying and in the race.”
“We’ve been aggressive from the beginning here. And there may be a little bit more to come.”
“There are circuits where the car works well. We come from three low-speed street circuits with a lot of bumps and we have understood why we were suffering more than usual there, also why the car seems to be good here, so we can try to put it together. everything and improve”, concluded the one from Mercedes .
