Mercedes 'still have issues to resolve' with tyre temps

Mercedes has pulled off a remarkable revival in recent race outings after struggling at the start of the season, but the team admits it's not fully over its problems with tyre temperatures.

It's long been apparent that the W15 performs well in cool conditions, only to struggle at warmer events which gives a level of inconsistency across the season which is difficult to work with.

To an extent, all teams have problems getting their cars to work in the wide range of weather and track conditions that F1 encounters over the course of the year, but Mercedes seems particularly affected.

The team's hypothesis is that the car puts more heat into the rear tyres than their rivals, which is great for grip when conditions are cool but which can cause overheating and tyre degradation at hotter venues.

However fixing the problem at one end could cause the car to suffer at the other. And being a part of the chassis' basic characteristic manes that change the behaviour is not a quick fix.

• Read also: Mercedes ‘building up’ towards 2025 title bid, says Russell

“I think at tracks like Silverstone, we had a very stable rear end," suggested Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin. "In Austria and Budapest, we lacked stability.

“That's all down to the fact that we seem to be putting more temperature in the tyres than the others," he continued. “We know we need to work on that area.

"We've got plans to do that, but that's not the sort of problem you can fix with a single aero update. It will be the result of quite a few developments to try and get on top of it.”

One suggestion is that an overall lack of downforce means that the car is sliding around too much, overheating the tyres, but Shovlin doesn't sound convinced by this argument.

"We don't think that is the root cause of the issue," he said. “If you looked at Silverstone, in terms of how much downforce our car has got, it can't be very different to the McLaren or the Red Bull.

"Otherwise we wouldn't have been able to gently pull away in the first stint,” he explained. “If you look at where people are running their cars now, they're all converging on a pretty narrow window in terms of what drag level you target, and inherently what downforce you get

"I think we're there or thereabouts in that regard," he added. “Obviously that's one of the key areas of development that will continue to keep giving. But it's an issue of just rear tyre temperature, and that's where a lot of our focus is.

“It's just to do with how you run the car," Shovlin continued. “You might need mechanical tools to help you change how you run the car, but you can achieve the same by affecting the aero characteristics through the speed range and through the corner."

While admitting that Mercedes didn't currently have all the answers, Shovlin said that what mattered was that they had options for how they went forward with the W15 when before they seemed to be going around in endless circles.

“We don't understand every aspect of what might be different with our car to theirs," he said. "But all we need are development directions that are going to improve it. We'll keep going at that problem until we get to where we want to be.”

Whatever they've been doing of late, Mercedes will hope to keep on the same upward trajectory. They have won three of the last three races with George Russell victorious in Austria and Lewis Hamilton winning at Silverstone and Spa.

The last race would have been a Mercedes 1-2 if not for Russell being disqualified from P1 when his car was found to be 1.5kg under the permitted minimum weight in parc ferme.

Despite that blow, the team could walk away with the satisfaction of having out-performed Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari at a track where they had not been expected to do well based on their early season form.

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