Mercedes is hopeful the work it has been doing to improve its tire management will allow it to be more competitive at a wider range of tracks, following its victory in the Singapore Grand Prix.
George Russell delivered a strong weekend in Singapore to take pole position and win the race, earning his second victory of the season. Mercedes has traditionally struggled in higher temperatures under the current set of technical regulations, but winning on a street circuit where tires can overheat is a sign of progress that it hopes to carry through the rest of the season.
“We have been doing a lot of work on looking after the rear tires, particularly at those tracks where they get a very punishing time,” trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said. “The air is very hot in Singapore. There’s also an awful lot of traction. Looking at last year, 2024, we did struggle in the race.
“It is nice to see the benefit of some of that work that’s been going on here at the factory over the course of the development of this car. And hopefully we’re seeing a progressive trend where either when the sun is shining and it’s very hot or you get these circuits where there is a lot of traction, we’ll start to be competitive.”
Despite the strong performance, Shovlin pointed out the similarities in track characteristics to Canada – where Russell also won this year – and emphasized that he doesn’t expect Mercedes to be the team to beat next time out at COTA.
“Just to try and manage expectations here,” he said. “If you look at the circuits that we’ve been strong at, and particularly the races that we’ve won this year – Montreal, Singapore – they’re relatively low-speed tracks, and there’s no doubt that this car is working well at that slow-speed corner region where we seem to have very good grip. The drivers have got very good confidence in the big braking zones.
“What we haven’t had so much of in those tracks is the high-speed cornering content, and that’s perhaps an area where we’ve struggled a bit. We’re still working on that, we’re still trying to look for every little bit that’s there in setup, but that’s certainly something that’s coming. If you look at a track like Austin, it’s got a very, very fast sector one, so we need to make sure we can perform in that area.
“It was encouraging to see that the car can still win races, we saw a brilliant performance from George, the whole team has really been fired up from this and that’s given us a lot of energy to take into these final six races. [There are] very different circuits coming up, we’re going to have to do a lot to adapt the car, but we’re definitely not going to give up the fight.”
