Mercedes hope that they "can enjoy our best day of the weekend on Sunday"
Having delivered a strong performance in qualifying at the British Grand Prix, Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin hopes that the Brackley-based outfit will "enjoy our best day of the weekend on Sunday."
Mercedes struggled for pace in the hot conditions on Friday. However, in the cooler conditions, the Brackley-based outfit had hoped that the cloud cover would improve its chances.
The German-British outfit managed to get both cars to the last segment of qualifying, but had to use an extra set of tyres to do so. As such, they could only go for one run on fresh rubber to their rivals’ two.
Andrea Kimi Antonelli displayed an encouraging performance over the weekend, but he wound up seventh, albeit he will only start from P10 on the grid due to his penalty from the Austrian Grand Prix.
George Russell looked to struggle to match Antonelli's pace across the practice sessions, but he put in a good final lap to grab fourth place on the grid for his home grand prix.
Mercedes' trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin hopes that the Brackley-based outfit will "enjoy our best day of the weekend on Sunday."
"It's been a difficult weekend so far, so today’s result is positive even if it is not what we aim for. The car has been a bit unpredictable in all practice sessions, both in its balance and the pace on the single lap. Improving that has not come easy but we made progress come Qualifying.
"George put together a very solid lap at the end of Q3. We were down to a single new Soft tyre by the final segment of the session, and that puts a lot of pressure on that final effort.
"To be less than a tenth and a half of a second to pole is a good result, although slightly frustrating that the gaps ahead put us just a few hundredths of a second from the front-row.
Shovlin continued: "Kimi meanwhile was struggling with a lack of rear stability in the high-speed corners. It is difficult to explain that based on the setup across the two cars but we'll keep working to understand that. He will have more positions to make up tomorrow but hopefully his race pace is strong, and he can fight through.
"It looks like it will be very tight at the front tomorrow. We weren’t stellar on our long runs in the hotter conditions of Friday, but we’ve made some changes since then and it looks like we will be dealing with slightly cooler conditions tomorrow. Hopefully we can enjoy our best day of the weekend on Sunday and bring home some solid points."
