Mercedes can only enjoy the blazing sun over Catalonia to a limited extent. The heat makes the engineers at the industry leader sweat - a solution to the tire problem is needed.
Barcelona (AP) - The black silver arrow is just too fast. What should be the guarantee of victory in Formula 1, can be "both a blessing and a curse", as team boss Toto Wolff put it. Why?
The problem is with the tires, the problem becomes apparent when it is very hot. At temperatures that are now expected for the Spanish Grand Prix this weekend. 30 degrees and more over Catalonia. This not only makes the drivers in the fireproof racing overalls sweat.
Mercedes is working flat out to find a way out of the rubber vicious circle. "If we don't fix it quickly, we will look stupidly out of the laundry next Sunday too," emphasized Mercedes racing engineer Andrew Shovlin after the tires on the cars of six-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and team-mate Valtteri Bottas were heavy on Sunday at Silverstone had suffered. Blisters had formed. A gamble with 300 things. A week earlier, both pilots even had a front tire burst.
However, the causes for the massive problems with the Pirelli tires were different. In the first race of the Silverstone double pack, the lateral and longitudinal forces acted too much on the rubbers through Bremen and through the corners. The problem was solved with more tire pressure for the second race. But then the rear tires got to work.
In the center they got very hot. "When the tire gets hot, it slips more and creates more heat," said Shovlin. The result: the car loses traction and the driver loses control of the car. This does not happen in the rain or in cooler temperatures, as the interaction between aerodynamics and engine performance works almost perfectly on the Silver Arrow. "But at other races where the tire is the limiting factor, we just flatten the tire," emphasized Wolff.
After the race last Sunday, in which Hamilton and Bottas managed to save themselves to second and third place behind Max Verstappen in the Red Bull, it looked as if the black rollers had picked up a second layer of used tire residues - a rolling one Crater landscape made of rubber. World Cup leaders Hamilton and Bottas were amazed to look at the tires of Verstappen, who climbed to second place in the standings, 30 points behind. "They still looked perfect," said Bottas.
Small consolation for the Mercedes crew: for the race on the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, where the Silver Arrows have only been able to beat themselves since the reintroduction of turbo engines and have won five of the six races since 2014, exclusive supplier Pirelli does not have the same rubber compounds as at least last in Silverstone in my luggage. Knowing that the track, which was newly paved two years ago, would wear out the tires anyway, the Italian manufacturer decided on the three hardest compounds - just as it did just two weeks ago in Silverstone. "It will be the most demanding race on the circuit that we have seen so far," predicted Pirelli race director Mario Isola nonetheless.
"I think it would be foolish if we said, we don't see the problem again and we don't see it in Spain," fears Mercedes man Shovlin. "There is no doubt Spain will be tough."
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 200813-99-152529 / 2
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Video with the explanations of Shovin at yputube.com
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