7:34 – Lewis Hamilton holds a 34-point championship advantage with just five events remaining, but nothing is certain amid Mercedes’ struggles in Singapore and Malaysia. GPUpdate.net looks at the situation.
This has been a peculiar season – the title fight that has threatened to fizzle but may still spark; Hamilton has grabbed 93 of the 100 available points since the summer break, turning a 14-point deficit into a 34-point advantage. Ferrari, after an encouraging display in Belgium, had a horrible home race, cannibalised itself in Singapore and chucked away victory in Malaysia. Yet the doubts are swirling around Mercedes, which has humbly admitted it got lucky. Ifs and buts are meaningless in sport, but the picture could easily be very different. A win tally of 9-4 in Mercedes’ favour reflects the strength of each team (and its drivers), not necessarily the pure pace of each car – and it is something Mercedes is starkly aware of, in a title fight which has swung on the tiniest of margins.
The most worrying aspect for Mercedes is not merely the pace and improvements of Red Bull and Ferrari, but the fact that – 15 rounds into the season – it is still unsure race-by-race how its “diva” will perform. It has been easy to put Mercedes into two boxes this season – it performs well at circuits with long straights where aerodynamic efficiency is required, and struggles at high-downforce venues with minimal on-throttle sections. However, it is more nuanced than that. There are tyre compounds and operating windows to consider, weather conditions – most prominently temperatures – tarmac surface, grip levels, not to mention the form of its drivers, and the limitations of its rivals, all accentuated by the fact that the 2017 cars are “very complex”, according to team boss Toto Wolff. What may be perceived as blips could be endemic, and vice versa; the picture is tangled.
“We have a capricious car that has a very narrow operating window with the tyres, where the tyres generate optimum grip, and dipping in and out of the window is the fundamental story of 2017 for us,” commented Wolff.
Mercedes’ task in Malaysia was complicated by the introduction of an updated aerodynamic package; the team was left puzzled by its lack of pace during Friday practice, prompting Hamilton to ditch the new parts. As a result, Mercedes was operating with two different specification cars, and subsequently on the back foot, leaving it with more work to do. Did the upgrade simply not suit the circuit? Was it unable to be fully exploited due to the truncated practice sessions? Was it down to an incorrect developmental direction, merely an aberration, or does the truth lie somewhere in the middle? These are all questions that Mercedes has to address, not just for 2017, but for 2018.
“There’s nothing we can do,” stated Hamilton in a matter-of-fact manner.
“It’s the way the car is. People have been talking all year long that we’ve got the best car, it’s a fact that at some races the car has worked out to be better.
“Overall I think we have not got the best car, we’ve done an exceptional job with what we’ve got.
“There are some really big problems but I can’t really explain to you what they are…
“We really need to make sure we rectify them for next year’s car, if we’re going to have any chance of fighting both these teams [Ferrari and Red Bull] next year when they step up their game.
“This year I think we can just stay there or thereabouts.
“These next races are going to be crucial in terms of finding out whether we can iron out some of the creases that we have with the car.”
Another alarming element is the form of Bottas, whose pace has waned horribly since his encouraging start to life in silver overalls. Only once in the last six races (Hungary) has Bottas beaten Hamilton over one-lap – in the others he has been over half a second adrift: 0.776s (Britain), 0.541s (Belgium), 2.279s (Italy), 0.684s (Singapore), 0.680s (Malaysia).
Bottas was starkly open about his current shortcomings, admitting that he is enduring something of a crisis of confidence.
“Being honest it may be the most difficult time of my career so far, in terms of how I feels every time I get in the car,” said Bottas. “I just want to perform, to be on a good level, but I haven’t been doing this for some time for various reasons.
“You need to get that back and need to get that feeling of enjoying the driving and letting yourself a bit more lose. But it comes from understanding all those fine details when you are struggling sometimes.
“After such a bad run of races just pure confidence in the car and trusting your own skills and being 100 per cent comfortable that makes a massive difference. This weekend I haven’t been 100 per cent comfortable.
“It’s never a good thing when you jump in the car and you don’t feel 100 per cent secure and if you don’t know by 100 per cent that you can be the absolute quickest that is never good.
“This sport is so sensitive from the mental state as a driver maybe it sounds funny but it is a very, very sensitive sport mentally and you need to be absolutely on it if you want to be at your best.”
Nonetheless, in attempting to analyse his absence of pace, Bottas pointed to the hot conditions at Sepang as a factor.
“In the first stint I had quite a lot of understeer, so I was struggling with the balance,” he said.
“The story of the race was managing the tyre temperatures. If I tried harder, then I started to overheat the tyre and slide even more, so I had to manage everything and that’s why I was so slow.
“I was mainly struggling more with the front end, which hasn’t really been the case many times this year. Now in the mid-corners I am losing a lot of front end.
“It is tricky to get the car turned, overheating the left-front tyre, also four-wheel sliding in high-speed corners.”
Mercedes – and Bottas – can take solace that temperatures should be cooler in Japan, but it cannot rely on the climate forever.
“We need to analyse the race because the upgrade package should have been quite a step forward in terms of downforce, but I couldn’t really see it,” said Bottas.
“There are still a lot of things we need to try to understand, we need to learn.”
Mercedes has proved previously that it can learn from a chastening experience, recovering from its Monaco woes to clock a 1-2 two weeks later in Canada, as it worked 24/7 to unearth fixes, concentrating heavily on the Ultra Soft tyre.
With another three races in the next four weeks, it has another battle on its hands – not to mention the knock-on effect from what it can learn for next season’s package.
“We leave Malaysia with a lot of question marks and we need to find answers to them in the next days and weeks, to ensure that we keep moving forward and racing at the front in the final quarter of this championship,” says Wolff.
“We cannot get distracted by the fact we got lucky again.”
Will Mercedes arrive at Suzuka and slump to a third-row start, relying on its rivals imploding again, or will it sweep around the majestic venue and demolish its opponents?
“Going on towards the next races, I have no idea how it will work out,” quipped Hamilton.
With just five rounds remaining, nothing is quite as straightforward as it seems, and that is a worry for Mercedes.
Source :http://feeds.gpupdate.net
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