Las Vegas causes headaches for Mercedes: 'It's completely new'

After a disastrous weekend in Brazil, Mercedes are not exactly going into the Las Vegas Grand Prix with much confidence. A weekend in the unknown anyway for many teams, but certainly for Mercedes.

For Mercedes, the Brazilian Grand Prix was a major setback. The team suffered far too much wear and tear and saw Lewis Hamilton finish eighth at the GP. Mercedes' problem: the team had no idea what is going on. Heading into Las Vegas, that makes it difficult for the team to determine how it is doing, although the F1 circus there will face completely different conditions.

Why Las Vegas is so tricky for F1 teams

"It's a completely new ball game. We have tried to gather as much information as I am sure every other team has tried to. We have models of the track in the simulator, we have gathered other information and pictures of the tarmac and so on. The weather is going to play a big part too. It is quite cold at this time of the year in Vegas, especially the sessions happening around midnight," said Riccardo Musconi, Head of Trackside Performance, in Mercedes' debrief.

"We will have the softest selection of tyres in Vegas. That is adding an extra dimension to the problem. The truth is every team to some degree will venture into the unknown because we don’t have any previous data. The preparation work we are conducting at the factory will have to cover different dimensions, different aspects of it and more than we usually do for other tracks."