Mercedes coming up short after FP1 and FP2: 'That's our biggest concern'

Although Mercedes had a fast start to the Abu Dhabi GP weekend and George Russell and Lewis Hamilton topped the timesheets, it was not a smooth day according to Mercedes chief Andrew Shovlin.

Indeed, according to the Briton, there is still plenty of room for improvement in several areas. In FP1, the W13s seemd fast, but in FP2, there were no more rookies on track and it was the turn of the F1 drivers, including Max Verstappen. Russell still made it into the top three, but was nowhere near Verstappen. Hamilton was left further behind.

Mercedes still falls short

Shovlin said in a press statement, "It was a busy day. We did quite a lot of testing in the first session, so we didn't have the usual focus on preparing for the race. That work was moved to the afternoon session." It was a chaotic day at Mercedes. And although Mercedes got to everything that was scheduled, the result was not very positive.

Shovlin: "We lacked pace on the single laps and on the long runs. Unusually, our wear was also higher than our rivals. So we will look into that and investigate what is causing it. That is our biggest concern at the moment. There is obviously plenty to do, but the gaps don't look huge, so hopefully we can get ourselves in contention with a few small steps in the right direction."