Mercedes explains why tyre management was confusing at Las Vegas
On the back of a double podium finish at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained why tyre management turned out to be a confusing task during the 50-lap Nevadan race.
George Russell had an ordinary start and managed to capitalize on Lando Norris’ small error at Turn 1 to move himself up into second place on the opening lap.
Although he looked very competitive in the opening stages of the race and put race leader Max Verstappen under pressure, he struggled to keep his tyre alive and elected to pit earlier than his rivals.
As a result of his early pit stop, he managed to close in on Verstappen after the first round of pit stops, but he used too much tyre life. While he was trying to look after his tyres, Norris closed in on him and managed to go past Russell. The Mercedes driver finished third, but he inherited second place after Norris’ disqualification for a technical infringement.
His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli started from P17 after his difficult qualifying session. The Bologna-born driver started on the softs, pitted early for the hards under the Virtual Safety Car intervention.
Although several drivers struggled to keep the tyres in good shape, Antonelli somehow managed to make that compound last all the way to the flag.
In the closing stages, Oscar Piastri and Charles Leclerc closed in on Antonelli, putting him under great pressure, but he managed to hold the McLaren and the Ferrari driver at bay for lap after lap.
In the closing stages, he managed to escape from Leclerc enough to finish ahead of the Monegasque despite a five-second time penalty for jumping the start. Ultimately, he came home fifth, but he inherited P3 with the later disqualification of both McLaren cars.
Reflecting on the Brackley-based team's performance, Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained why tyre management turned out to be a confusing task during the 50-lap Nevadan race.
"We'd hoped that both drivers would be able to move forward from our qualifying positions of P4 and P17 so we can be satisfied with P3 and P5 at the end of the race. George didn't quite have the pace to challenge Verstappen or Norris; his tyres started to drop earlier in the first stint and from that point it was more of a case of guaranteeing the podium.
"He was managing the tyres but even so, still suffered with some graining but when he pushed on the last two laps, the tyres and the pace improved. We'll go through the data to understand if we were actually making matters worse by doing so much management.
"Kimi had a great race considering his start position. We knew starting on the Soft and stopping early was a risk but if the Hard tyre held on to the finish, it was our best chance to get him into good points.
"We took the opportunity presented by the early Virtual Safety Car and from there he drove brilliantly to keep his tyres in good shape, whilst making some critical overtakes.
Signing off with a word for potential areas to improve in the near future, Shovlin revealed:"There are clearly areas we can improve on from this weekend. We had potential to qualify better, and we need to understand why George was suffering from worse degradation than Kimi, but overall it was a good recovery and a useful haul of points in our fight for P2 in the championship."
