Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin: “Our weekend has been pretty tough but today was frustrating”

Andrew Shovlin reflected on a ‘pretty tough’ weekend for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team at the Suzuka International Racing Course, which ended with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell ending fifth and eighth respectively in Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix.

After the resumption of the race following an initial red flag in Japan, shown because of the heavy rain that was falling around the track, Hamilton found himself stuck behind Esteban Ocon all the way to the chequered flag, with the Briton struggling to find a way past the Frenchman due to a lack of straight-line speed from his W13.

Russell, on the other hand, was forced to make some decisive overtakes himself as he made up places lost early on when Mercedes opted to double stack their drivers in the pits when making the switch from full wet tyres to the intermediates.  Some of Russell’s passes were fantastic, particularly going around the outside in the Esses.

Shovlin, the Track Engineering Director at Mercedes, says there was no chance for Hamilton to make the pass on Ocon without the use of DRS, which was not activated due to the weather conditions in Japan.

“Well done to Max [Verstappen] on the championship, he’s driven brilliantly this year,” said Shovlin.  “Our weekend has been pretty tough but today was frustrating: the car had good pace, but we were just stuck behind cars and had no chance of getting through without DRS.

“The conditions were clearly tricky, but it was good that we were able to get the race going in the end and give the fans some entertainment.”

Shovlin says there was only one real decision to make during the race on Sunday, which was when they would switch their drivers over to the intermediate tyre, and hindsight feels they could have waited a lap to pit Russell to give him a better chance of staying in the fight for fourth.

“There was only really the one decision point to make the in race which was when to come in for Inters,” Shovlin added.  “It looked like the optimum would have been to follow the Safety Car in when we restarted which was surprising given the amount of water on the track.

“We’d called to bring both in together and that cost us a bit of time in the stops for George with the stacking; he’d have joined a couple of places further up if we’d waited a lap which would have given him a better chance of being part of the race that Lewis was having with Esteban.

“Saying that, Lewis was having a frustrating time trying to get through. He had good pace and we’d opted for a high downforce level expecting rain, but he just couldn’t find a way past due to the straight-line speed.”

Shovlin says there is plenty for Mercedes to look through and understand across the past two races in Singapore and Japan, and they will be busy getting the two W13’s ready for the next double header, which starts in two weeks time at the Circuit of the Americas.

“So, plenty of things over the last two races that we can improve on, not least giving the drivers a better car in qualifying so we can hopefully start closer to the front,” he said.  

“We’ll be busy for the next week getting ready for Austin and hoping to get ourselves back into a position where we are racing for the podium positions.”