Four podiums in the last two races and the first pole position arrived in the last Qualifying before the summer break: the Mercedes W13 after a long absence from the noble areas of the ranking in July with a more traditional calendar, it gave more than a sign of life. At Silverstone in the race Lewis Hamilton was very fast, confirming himself in France and Hungary, where George Russell signed the best performance in Q3 ahead of the very favorite Ferraris.
Thanks to more aggressive adjustments and less conservative in terms of temperatures at the tire level by operating on the rim baskets which, through the brake air intakes, can regulate the heat of the tires. Unlike Ferrari, Mercedes found the ideal operating temperature and thus managed to be fast on the flying lap without paying excessively duty in the race the next day. In fact, tire degradation on Russell and Hamilton’s Mercedes was not that different from that seen by the competition.
The prospects of experiencing a second half of the season as protagonists for Mercedes men seem to be there, also because the FIA anti-porpoising directive that will intervene on flexible flat bottoms could take away some performance to Ferrari and Red Bull. The W13, on the other hand, could benefit from other innovations set up in Brackley in view of the race in Spa.
“This machine is engineering troublesome – the words of the head of track engineers Andrew Shovlin reported by The-Race.com newspaper – because it lets you glimpse flashes of potential that push you to update the project or at least not to abandon it. In Hungary we got the tire operating window perfectly right, but it is something that we cannot assume will happen in the next stages. In any case, we are not that far from Ferrari and Red Bull and we will bring updates to fill this gap ”.
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