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Mercedes mystified by lack of race pace
Source: Agencies |
May 14, 2013, Tuesday
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MERCEDES urged its many Formula One technical boffins to "think outside the box" and consider the unconsidered after a Spanish Grand Prix that left the team baffled by its cars' lack of race pace.
Despite scorching to its third pole position in a row, with Germany's Nico Rosberg notching up his second in succession, Mercedes flopped when it mattered most at the Circuit de Catalunya. Lewis Hamilton went from second to 12th, in what he said was his worst race for a very long time, while Rosberg finished sixth.
How to manage and extract performance from the Pirelli tires is the conundrum and Mercedes is desperately seeking answers.
"Generally what you can say is that the car is a quick car," Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said.
"This is not about a car or a team struggling with lacking pace, a car where you end up 15th on Saturday and then 12th or 16th on Sunday. It is a car that is tremendously fast on the Saturday and has real speed. And then on Sunday we are not able to manage the car with the tires.
"One could say 'Did the others go even much more conservative in terms of race setup?' I don't think so. It's something else and I think it requires out of the box thinking.
"It's about everybody in the team sticking their heads together and saying let's analyze what we do from a Saturday to a Sunday. Is there anything we need to be looking at which we didn't look at until now?"
Despite scorching to its third pole position in a row, with Germany's Nico Rosberg notching up his second in succession, Mercedes flopped when it mattered most at the Circuit de Catalunya. Lewis Hamilton went from second to 12th, in what he said was his worst race for a very long time, while Rosberg finished sixth.
How to manage and extract performance from the Pirelli tires is the conundrum and Mercedes is desperately seeking answers.
"Generally what you can say is that the car is a quick car," Mercedes motorsport head Toto Wolff said.
"This is not about a car or a team struggling with lacking pace, a car where you end up 15th on Saturday and then 12th or 16th on Sunday. It is a car that is tremendously fast on the Saturday and has real speed. And then on Sunday we are not able to manage the car with the tires.
"One could say 'Did the others go even much more conservative in terms of race setup?' I don't think so. It's something else and I think it requires out of the box thinking.
"It's about everybody in the team sticking their heads together and saying let's analyze what we do from a Saturday to a Sunday. Is there anything we need to be looking at which we didn't look at until now?"
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