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Mercedes’ director of track engineering Andrew Shovlin is not expecting an easy Bahrain Grand Prix as the race pace of his cars in practice was “clearly normal”.
At first glance, Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas are expected to run and hide from the rest of the field at Sakhir having blocked the front row in qualifying ahead of Max Verstappen’s Red Bull.
But Shovlin doesn’t see it that way, in part because Red Bull has an extra set of hard tires at their disposal that could give them another option in terms of strategy and also because of the race simulation that Mercedes had run in practice.
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“It’s not entirely straightforward, we’ve been struggling a bit with the balance of the car and during free practice we’ve struggled to put everything in the right window,” Shovlin said.
“However, in qualifying everything went well and we were able to find more and more time as the track took hold.
“We are happy that both cars start on the medium tire, but we hope to see some differences in strategy tomorrow as several teams have included an extra hard tire in their race allocation.
“Our long races on Friday were clearly average so we made quite a few changes before today and hopefully we can keep tire temperatures under control during the race.
“It’s also a track where you can overtake, where degradation plays a big role in strategy and where you can undercut from a long way back, which should be an exciting race.”
Team Principal Toto Wolff predicted the strategy Verstappen is likely to adopt, as the Dutchman aims for a victory like the previous one in 2020, at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone, where he capitalized on increased tire wear from Mercedes.
“Tomorrow is going to be pretty tough,” Wolff said after referring to qualifying, in which Hamilton beat Bottas by 0.289 seconds in Q3, as “a good day at the office.”
“Verstappen has a second hard tire and will most likely execute a medium-hard-hard strategy which, on paper, is the fastest strategy. But we will do our best to fight a good fight.
“It will be an exciting race and we are looking forward to putting on a great show under the lights here in Bahrain.”
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