After third place on the grid achieved in qualifying, there were high expectations at Mercedes. The hope was to be at least at Ferrari's level, perhaps slightly better in terms of race pace, as James Allison had suggested at the end of the winter tests, indicating how the Silver Arrow had its best weapon in managing tires in the long run. distance.
In the space of a few laps, the Bahrain Grand Prix transformed from a possible fight for the podium to a suffering as the car slowed down due to some problems with the Power Unit which became evident after the first tire change.
Also taking advantage of the brake balance problems suffered by Charles Leclerc, George Russell managed to take second place by completing a nice overtaking on the outside of turn 4 right on the Ferrari's Monegasque. Even though he was unable to get ahead of his rivals behind him, with the trio of Sergio Perez, Carlos Sainz and Leclerc, the Briton felt confident that he could enter the fight for one of the two podium places.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
However, after the first pit stop the overheating problems began to weigh on the performance of the W15, even when it was in free air, forcing not only to lower the engine power, but also to have to carry out a massive lift and coast at the bottom of the straights, thus making it quite difficult to try to resist the pace of your opponents. Russell himself was then overtaken again by Leclerc, without the possibility of responding.
The problems not only slowed down the Briton, but also his teammate, Lewis Hamilton: both also had to face complications with energy management, to the point of experiencing a derating [il momento in cui l’ibrido viene tagliato] at certain stages of the match. Furthermore, to respond to this problem, Russell was also prohibited from using overtake, i.e. the mapping through which pilots can have a surplus of power from the hybrid part to try to annoy an opponent or respond to an attack. A problem that was also noticed when going through turn 12, where they asked on several occasions to lift their foot while maintaining a more conservative approach.
The engine problems also put Williams, which has a Mercedes Power Unit, in crisis, so much so that several error messages also appeared on the steering wheel.
When asked about the problems encountered by the Star in managing temperatures, Toto Wolff explained he did not give a precise answer as to what caused these problems, also because they had not found any worrying signals during the tests: “[I test pre-stagionali] they were pretty good. Also Thursday and Friday performances [le prove] they were encouraging. The car was stable, good. Pilots like it. When we started the race on the soft tyre, everything went according to plan. Then, unfortunately, we had to lower the engine more than expected. We still can't figure out where it came from. One of our customer teams, Williams, had the same problem. The other two [McLaren e Aston Martin] no. It was unexpected.”
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
Wolff calculated that the drop in performance is quantifiable as a loss of around half a second per lap. After 57 laps, Russell closed 22 seconds behind Carlos Sainz, the first non-Red Bull car and third on the podium, while the gap to Verstappen stopped at 47 seconds.
“Since then [dall’inizio dei problemi di surriscaldamento], if you lose 0.3-4 tenths of Power Unit performance, then you have to do lift-and-coast, so I think at some points it was probably 5 or 6 tenths of lost pace that the car actually had . Therefore, it wasn't very fun…”.
“At some points, we were literally not a few degrees, but about 10 degrees above what we thought we should be.”
Wolff, who believes the problems will be resolved in time for this weekend's Saudi Arabian GP, said the temperature spikes occurred regardless of whether riders raced in dirty air caused by traffic. In fact, with Russell the problem occurred even when he was riding in clean air: “I think even without traffic, at the beginning, we were already over the limit,” explained Wolff.
The configuration with multiple openings used in the hottest hours of the first day
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“We don't know, because we pretty much kept the same cooling levels as the long runs from the previous days. It's just that it increased more than we thought. I don't think any other team opened up the car more than they did before. So, It's something that probably concerned us more.”
Precisely on this last point, in fact Mercedes did not change the configuration in terms of openings compared to Friday evening in the long runs: even at that time it ran with a side panel that included three openings. Only in the afternoon, however, when the ambient temperatures were much higher, did the W15 run with more generous outbursts, but for the night hours it was preferred to go for a more extreme solution. “It's not something we need to be worried about. We just have to use a slightly larger body, which may cost us a few cents in terms of performance, but at least we won't lose more than four tenths of the engine. We have to look at ourselves, because it cost us a lot,” Russell added.
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