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There was a whole lot of hype coming into the French GP this weekend that Mercedes would do effectively, even that Lewis Hamilton might win the race. The W13 runs it’s finest on clean circuits as in Bahrain and Silverstone and the Paul Ricard circuit is among the smoothest. The staff additionally introduced one other raft of upgrades although the automotive demonstrated it’s Achilles heel once more out on observe.
Workforce boss Toto Wolff was requested by Sky F1 if he was pleased with the primary session.
“No not the place we need to be. We’re attempting a lot of elements, we’re simply missing tempo for the time being,” replied the Austrian wanting downbeat.
“Now we have a couple of aerodynamic modifications on the ground – on the facet edges – little issues that ought to make it higher.
When requested whether or not he had hoped the automotive would come right here and carry out higher like in Silverstone, Wolff confirmed the staff had been upbeat concerning the weekend in Paul Ricard.
“Positively. It’s simply early days however the efficiency in FP1 was a bit underwhelming. We don’t appear to extract sufficient out of it, so we’re going to do some compares and see what it offers within the afternoon.”
Clearly George Russell and Lewis Hamilton stand in had been working the sae elements and setup however with the return of Hamilton within the afternoon the staff will configure the automobiles in another way after which examine the relative efficiency.
The 2022 Mercedes W13 has an Achilles heel as Toto explains.
“Curiously, we’re nonetheless not getting the tyres within the optimum grip window even not in lap 3. We’re going faster and faster and clearly the delicate needs to be fast lap 1, there’s one thing we haven’t fairly understood.”
“We’re shedding in all corners right here in opposition to Ferrari and on the straights in opposition to Purple Bull with them having a decrease rear wing, so there’s not an space aside from flip 11 the place we’re aggressive”
Curiously the Mercedes automobiles that received 8 consecutive constructor’s titles when it was weak had the reverse downside. Overheating the tyres when the Ferrari was kinder on its rubber.
It must be worrying for Mercedes that half approach via the season they don’t perceive handle their tyres in an optimum vogue.
The lack of the W13 to heat its tyres was most evident on the restart in the direction of the tip of the Silverstone race, when on recent delicate tyres Hamilton struggled to match LeClercs tempo on used mediums.
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