Mercedes: "Red Bull seems to be at the very best end of that spectrum"

Mercedes had to acknowledge their superior in Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen on Sunday. Chief Race Engineer of Mercedes Andrew Shovlin says that the team goes back to Brackley with a mountain of homework.

Problems worse than thought

"We knew that blistering was an issue," said Shovlin. "We knew that last week. We know what sort of temperatures that it will occur at. And so that wasn't news to us. What was news to us was we're kind of at the very, very worst end of that problem", said Shovlin quoted by Motorsport.com.

"And Red Bull appears to be at the very best end of that spectrum. And that's the thing that we need to understand. Because there's been other races where everyone's been in the same boat, but why are we an outlier? Right now, we haven't got the answer", continues Shovlin.

Urgency of the problem

Shovlin announces that it is an urgent problem, because on Tuesday the team will fly over to Spain, where the weather forecasts are not in favour of Mercedes. "And you know, there's an element of urgency here because we're in Barcelona, we're flying out there on Tuesday, running on Friday, it's forecast to be 30C, the track will be a bit like this. It's a high-energy circuit."

Shovlin also knows that Red Bull is not too far from Mercedes in terms of performance. "We've seen Red Bull, they're not that far off us in races, even when we're looking at our best. So I think to be honest, if we don't make progress, we'll be in trouble there as well. So that's kind of where this urgency to get a bit of a grip on it comes from."