Mercedes reveal how conditions affected the pecking order in Jeddah
Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has revealed that the cooler conditions contributed to the fact that Red Bull and Mercedes managed to close the gap to the McLarens which looked out of reach in the final practice session.
It was not obvious how competitive Mercedes is at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit as the W16 looked strong in certain conditions, but it appeared to lack pace in others. However, qualifying night at Jeddah turned out to be a strong session for the Brackley-based outfit after George Russell came agonisingly close in battle for Jeddah pole
Ultimately, the Briton wound up just a tenth off pole, firmly in the fight with the Red Bull and McLaren ahead. His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who has experience of the Jeddah circuit from last year when he drove in F2, once again showed how quickly he is progressing as he ended up fifth on the grid.
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff claimed that his team was surprised to be in the fight for pole position after the practice sessions.
"That was an exciting Qualifying session, even if we ended up on the wrong end of the top three. There was very little between ourselves, the McLarens and the Red Bull of Verstappen in the end. You would always want to be starting from pole position, but we didn’t expect to be in the fight for P1 after FP3. George did a great job therefore to put the car in the mix and he will be looking forward tomorrow.
"Kimi meanwhile once again put in a strong performance despite it being so early in his F1 career. He made a small mistake in the first sector which cost him a couple of tenths. Without that, he would likely have been P4, but P5 is still a great starting position.
"The car seems to be provided a stable platform for us to work with. Over the first five races, we’ve been consistently in the fight for the podium and hopefully we can keep that going in tomorrow’s race. The McLarens looked to have very strong long run pace on Friday, so we think it will be difficult to fight Piastri for the win. Let’s see what happens though and, as always, we will be giving it our all."
Reflecting on Mercedes' qualifying at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has revealed that the cooler conditions contributed to the fact that Red Bull and Mercedes managed to close the gap to the McLarens which looked out of reach in the final practice session.
"We had a decent final practice session, and the car was working well. Like Bahrain though, it looked like McLaren would be totally out of reach in Qualifying. In the cooler conditions later in the evening though, the W16 car was working much better than in FP2 yesterday. That was a pleasing development and meant we were able to stay close to the front.
"With Kimi, we used a second set of Soft tyres to get through Q1. As it turns out, he'd have just made it through with his first lap, but we rightly didn’t risk that. From there on it was straightforward to get both into Q3, George with two new sets and Kimi down to one.
"The timing of Norris’s red flag wasn't ideal as it came out just before both our drivers would have completed their first laps. That meant it all came down to the final efforts at the end of the session. Neither lap was perfect, with both drivers quite rightly making sure we got the laps in to put a time on the board.
"Kimi had a poor first sequence but finished strong and we're pleased to see him secure P5 on the grid. George was looking close to the times Verstappen and Piastri set but lost a little in the final corner to put him P3. Overall, we're left with a sense we could have achieved a bit more but in many ways it's a healthy sense of frustration.
"We've improved a long way since last year and we'll keep pushing. The points are all to play for tomorrow and there should be plenty of opportunity as it's rarely a dull race here in Jeddah."
