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Mercedes’ unbeaten streak in qualifying this year came to an end in an extraordinary qualifying session at Istanbul Park.
The clue to why the W11 was defeated lies in the staggering scale of the team’s first loss of the year – 4.5 seconds slower than a car powered by the same engine.
Earlier this year, in wet conditions at a more typical circuit, the Red Bull Ring, Lewis Hamilton put his Mercedes in pole position by 1.2 seconds. The 10 contenders from the third quarter were covered by 2.3s.
In today’s bizarre session, the top 10 were covered by a mustache in nine and a half seconds, a huge difference for an F1 field. If we rule out the tribulations of Antonio Giovinazzi, the top nine were covered for almost five and a half seconds.
To put that in perspective, in the same wet qualifying session at the Red Bull Ring, the entire field was covered for just 3.6 seconds in Q1. Even taking into account the slightly shorter lap at that circuit, this illustrates how weird today’s qualifying session was.
We saw extreme over-performance – Racing Point, which posted its worst performance of the season last time around, came in first and third. The counterpoint was the extreme low performance of Mercedes.
The W11 couldn’t generate enough heat in its tires and the problem got worse with each passing lap, as explained by its head of track operations, Andrew Shovlin.
“We are too cold and that means we have no control,” he said. “But the problem is that it becomes a vicious circle in which if you are not in control, you cannot generate the temperature and you fall in a spiral.
“When you look at the gap between us and pole and [Racing Point], how fast could the tires put, you’re talking seconds and seconds. When diagnosing problems, such large gaps are always related to the temperature of the tires, unless there are important parts that have fallen, but it is almost always the temperature of the tires. So there is a bit to learn. “
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Shovlin said Mercedes’ priority in recent years has been to better cope with the higher temperatures. The extreme conditions in Istanbul Park suggested that this has weakened its advantage when conditions are very cold, not to mention wetness and slipping.
“I think we have developed our car to be good in hot conditions,” Shovlin said. “That used to be a weakness. We have to be able to adapt when the conditions are certainly very, very cold and we haven’t done very well. And there is no doubt that there is much to learn today. “
The W11 performed better in the rain in Austria because the temperatures were higher. “What you want on a day like today is a car that overheats, the tires kill them on most circuits, and suddenly you’re in a good place,” Shovlin said.
“So it’s no wonder why we were necessarily good there. It’s just that the impact was being seconds from a Racing Point, seconds from a Red Bull, that’s what surprised us. But we understand enough about the tires to know how you can put yourself in that position. “
A major question mark looms over likely conditions for tomorrow’s race. But Mercedes worries that they won’t be particularly competitive, rain or shine.
“It is difficult to predict. I think if you are looking at a race in the wet, what we need to do is think a bit about how to get the tires on fast. Because you just look at our lap times in a two or three lap race today and see what, for example, Stroll was doing in the [Racing Point] in the end, you’ll be 10 seconds away in no time.
“So that’s one of the biggest problems for us if we can’t get the tires on. Now, due to the change in weather conditions that we have when it is wet, we can make changes to the level of heating that you are putting in the car. So there are some things we can do.
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“But that’s the most important thing that will probably keep us awake tonight is the idea that the peloton is swallowing you and the leaders are pulling away and you can’t match their pace. I think we’ll get there eventually because we’ve shown that we can generate temperature, it just takes a long time.
“However, in a dry race, wet and dry are not much different here. They are the same problems: low grip, balance, temperature build-up. The problems are identical, which is not the case in most circuits. So we are really trying to solve similar things.
“But the concern with dry tires was that while they were difficult to start, they were also worn and you could see some people complaining of grit. And as the circuit changes in grip level, the severity of that will evolve as well.
“So it’s about making the car work, that’s the main thing, but we also don’t have much information about what the tires are going to do, how far we can go, what our relative pace is. . So, in addition to having to fix the fundamentals of the package, we also have this lack of information and many problems that we are going to try to overcome during the race.
“Besides the fact that we are not used to starting so low in the group. So if we’re fast enough, we’ll have people to think about, and strategy, how to try to put ourselves in a position where hopefully we can cause Red Bull a bit of trouble. “
For a team that has won so many races and usually plays a cautious game of ‘expectation management’, it’s tempting to roll your eyes and predict who will lead in the second lap. Maybe they will.
But on the basis of this, it seems that the very unusual conditions this weekend have created another ‘Singapore 2015’ scenario for the world champions. At the very least, it means that the record for getting pole position in all races in a season remains unclaimed.
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2020 Turkish Grand Prix
Browse all articles from the 2020 Turkish Grand Prix
