安德鲁Shovlin提供思想如何梅赛德斯的了dates performed at Silverstone

Thomas Maher 11 Jul 2023 11:31 AM

Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton at the British Grand Prix. Silverstone, July 2023.

Mercedes showed up with a new specification front wing as their latest upgrade for the W14 at Silverstone.

As part of their ongoing push to try catching up with Red Bull at the head of the Formula 1 field, Mercedes rolled out another element of their upgrade package at the British Grand Prix.

The upgrade followed on from more comprehensive changes made to the underfloor design, the front suspension, and the introduction of sidepods onto the W14 after chasing a sidepod-less concept for the past 18 months.

What changes did Mercedes make for Silverstone?

这款文胸ckley-based team showed up with a new front wing design for Silverstone, with a “change in front wing chordwise and spanwise loading distribution resulting in re-distribution of front wing wake downstream”, ie. improving the airflow to the bodywork and floor.

This was coupled with a revised endplate design, to create cleaner airflow and re-distributed vortices to improve floor performance.

But the changes seemed to make little difference to Mercedes’ on-track performance, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell brought into contention for podium finishes as a result of a late Safety Car intervention.

Speaking after Hamilton managed to come home in third place, Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering, offered his thoughts on how the wing had performed.

“It’s difficult to say because everyone’s developing so, so rapidly,” he told theF1 Nation podcast.

“You look at where Aston Martin were and, early on in the year, they were the team behind Red Bull and they were three-tenths ahead of us at some points.

“So it’s really hard to judge – I think we’re happy that the development that we’ve done is in the right direction. Is it enough? No, we need more.”

PlanetF1.com recommends

F1 Driver of the Day: Who has won the award in F1 2023?

F1 driver contracts: What is the current contract status of every driver on the 2023 grid?

Shovlin admitted McLaren had caught his team by surprise, after their leap forward in performance.

“Obviously, the Safety Car made [the podium] possible,” he said.

“We wouldn’t be looking at a podium without that, it was a surprise how fast McLaren were, but I think they’re here to stay at the front of the grid now.

“But it was just nice to have one of our drivers up there. Nice to recover from a difficult Friday. And nice to get the points against Ferrari and Aston. But we look at where McLaren are and we realise we’ve got some work to do.”

Tom Clarkson, host of the podcast, said: “I think there is a general sense of disappointment within Mercedes and this third place for Lewis Hamilton is a great surprise.

“They lacked straight-line speed, certainly compared to the Red Bull and the McLaren, maybe the Hungaroring will suit them better. Let’s not beat about the bush – the only reason Lewis Hamilton was on the podium was because of that Safety Car.”

Lewis Hamilton: We’ve got work to do

Having had a bad opening lap to come around in eighth place and facing a steep uphill challenge to turn his race around, Hamilton detailed what had gone wrong.

“I can’t tell you the actual words I was thinking, but it was one of the worst opening laps that I’ve had for a while,” he said after his podium finish.

“So I think I’ll ultimately just try and gather my thoughts and calm down and not be erratic, but I had a relatively decent start.

“Then, into Turn 3, I just seemed to lock the rears for some reason, I think we had a tailwind into there. I just kept snapping and went wide and then the same into Turn 6 and 7.”

It was in following Norris – Hamilton on softs, Norris on hards – that the Mercedes driver was particular awed by seeing how good the McLaren MCL60 was at Silverstone’ high-speed sweeps.

“The most impressive part was at the end following [Norris],” he said.

“It was amazing to watch how good his car was at high speed. I know that we’ve got some work to do to catch up.

“I threw it up the inside into Turn 7 in the hope that ‘this is a moment I’m going to make it happen’ and pressed the overtake button. So we were both going down the road with overtake on, but he had less drag. So I had to back out. We’ve got some work to do to improve high-speed performance.”