Hi, I’m Andrew Shovlin,
I’m Trackside Engineering Director,
and I’m here to answer your questions
about the Japanese Grand Prix.
So, first question, I’ll answer it in
two parts. So, firstly, how does
it feel to be six-times Constructors’
Champions. Well, I mean, Suzuka was a
really special day and it wasn’t just
the Constructors’ Championship
that we were able to win, but we have
also secured the Drivers’ Championship.
So, now, it can only be a Mercedes driver,
either Lewis or Valtteri, that can win
that and that was very special for us
as a team because no one has actually
done six double Championships in a row.
We were able to get back from the race
Monday morning back here and actually enjoy
that with the team, there were some celebrations.
And it was just great to see everyone
but there is an enormous amount of
work has gone into that over the years.
Obviously, initially we were just trying
to win one Championship, then it was
two, then it was the triple, then winning
across a rule change but to actually
break that record that stood with
Ferrari was really quite a special moment.
Now the second part of that question,
well how do we stay motivated to
keep going and winning another.
It’s quite an interesting one, that,
because if you think about our racing year,
we spend nearly all of it racing and
there’s very little bit of it that isn’t
and it’s all about the processes that
are happening week in, week out to
understand the car, to solve the problems,
to improve it. And it isn’t really like
we are saying we have achieved one thing,
now what are we going to go and do next.
We are just always trying to get better
and better. We have got fierce competition
from Ferrari at the moment, we know that
Red Bull are never far away and again
that just drives us on. So, it isn’t a difficulty
really motivating yourself, it is just hard
work
and we know our competitors are working very
hard and we are just trying to keep that level
up. And as a team, we know that we can always
improve, we know that we can improve
on what we did in Suzuka and it’s really
that that’s actually spurring us on every
race and every year.
This next question is about why
we looked so good on Friday in free practice,
so we were the fastest car there,
and not so strong in Qualifying, only
good enough for the second row.
It’s true, we did look strong on Friday.
We had a note before the second practice
session from the FIA that was saying that
those times would be used to determine the
grid if Qualifying couldn’t take place on
Sunday morning. We took some fuel out, we turned
the Power Unit up, I am sure everyone
did the same. But then on Sunday, we saw
Ferrari were very, very quick. We couldn’t
quite match them, and it did look like
they’d taken a step forward. We didn’t
really get any slower, they were
definitely stronger but that could be
a number of things. One might be
that they have got a better engine
that they fit for Qualifying and the
Race than the one that they used for
free practice. They may also have improved
the car, the drivers might find time in
themselves. It was also very windy,
maybe their car suits the wind. So, we
are not quite sure what that is. But, we
know, we’ve seen this race and we’ve
seen many before we are not quite quick
enough in Qualifying and we do need to improve.
Next question is how do we prepare
for Qualifying and the race on the
same day. Well, that starts on Friday
night really, we were working up until
the curfew but just trying to make
sure you have got everything done
that you needed to do at the garage
because the next time we’d be in at
the track would be Sunday morning
and would be Qualifying just a couple
of hours after that. So, making sure
the cars were ready to run. We also
had to make sure the garage was safe,
with everything off the ground such
that if there was a flood, we weren’t
going to damage either the cars
or the equipment. The Saturday,
though, we weren’t allowed in at the track.
So, the engineers hired a room at the hotel,
we all got together and we just worked
through our normal plans because we
normally have a lot of time between
Qualifying when you know what the
grid is and the start of the race to look
at the strategies, to get everything ready,
the engineers can work with the drivers
on the balance of the car and we knew
here that was going to be a very
compressed time. So, we did as much
preparation work as we can, we came in,
we were ready for the Qualifying session
and that morning we were really only
talking to the drivers about Qualifying,
not wanting to distract them with everything
that was going on in the race and as soon
as Qualifying was over, they were then
in another meeting where we were
talking about race preparations,
race strategy. There’s no doubt it is
difficult to do that, there is nowhere
near enough time to do what we normally
do but we got all the key processes
completed. But, actually, it’s quite
nice when you get the pressure and
the challenge that that brings, and
you are just making sure that you can
do as good a job as possible
under the circumstances.
And we have a question about Valtteri’s start,
how did he get off the line so well?
Well, it was actually a very, very quick
reaction time. And when you look at it,
I think what happened was when
Sebastian ahead of him went, Valtteri
had seen that. He did release the clutch
after the lights had gone out, but it was
a
fast reaction time. And I think that
helped him. I think it may have also
hindered Lewis, it may have also
hindered Charles Leclerc when they
saw Sebastian move because their
reaction times weren’t so fast. But,
obviously, Valtteri took the opportunity
there and managed to inherit the lead.
How much damage was done to Lewis’s
car when the bits from Charles’s front wing
hit it? Well, we lost the wing mirror but that
doesn’t really impact the car aerodynamically.
There were a few other chips and bangs on
it but nothing particularly significant. Did it
effect his race? Well, it didn’t really hurt
the performance of the car, clearly not
better but not significantly worse and also
because he was never really defending
that wing mirror wasn’t a big deal. So,
he was able to live without it. So, overall,
we got off quite lightly and we were just
relieved that it didn’t go into the cockpit
area where it could’ve hurt Lewis.
Why did we leave Lewis out on that first stint?
Well, the simple answer is to create an offset
with the tyre degradation to Vettel and that
was all we were trying to do. Now, as you
saw Lewis comes out, he’s a fair gap
behind Vettel but he’s going to be
on fresher tyres and fresher tyres
all the way to the end of the race.
So, that gap gets closed down.
Now, we can put that data into
our models, we know how the
tyres degrade and the cost
over the entire race is just two
and a half seconds. But if you
can get tyre that are much quicker,
that are fresher, that is what
allows you to overtake. And
that was what we were banking
on there, that in that final stint
Lewis would be able to make a
passing move on Vettel. Now,
that didn’t work, and we need
to look at why that didn’t work.
We also need to make our car
better at overtaking because the
Ferrari is a very, very difficult car
to pass. And you’ll have seen in a
lot of these recent races that we’ve
had, we can catch up with them,
we are quicker in the race even, but
what we can’t do is get past if we are
behind. So, that we are going to work on.
Looking at the strategy though,
what we should’ve done was probably
stop Lewis earlier, gone for an aggressive
undercut, so sticking with that two
stop but an aggressive undercut and
that would hopefully have put Lewis
ahead at the end of the first stint.
Why did we box Lewis a second time?
Well, this question is about the
on-screen graphic you saw saying
there was 70% of rubber remaining.
That number probably comes from
Pirelli telling the broadcasters how far
they think the tyres can go, but every
car is different, how fast you drive the
tyres affects that and we don’t actually
know how much rubber there is
remaining on the tyre until we finish
or we take the set off the car, or finish
the race and we are actually able to
measure it. What we could see on
Lewis’s car was the lap times starting
to drop. And initially he’s losing a tenth
of a second a lap, then it goes up to
three tenths of a second for the last
couple of laps and he radioed to say
the tyres were dropping. Now, this was
an indication to us that we’d had the
best of the tyres. You can keep going, but
every lap will get slower and slower
and you lose out overall. At the point
we had to make that decision, we didn’t
have all the data from all the other
cars that had arrived at the end of
the race, but what you could see
in this race was the people who
made a successful one-stop were the
ones that actually took that first set very,
very far. There were an awful lot of cars
at the end of the race that were hitting four,
five, even six seconds of degradation and
that was just where they’ve started to
get to very low levels of rubber and it
simply can’t generate the grip.
Thank you very much for all of
your questions and for the kind
comments about the Championship.
We will look forward to answering
more of your questions after the
Mexican Grand Prix.
