Mercedes predict "tough time" in Turkey as team "not in great shape"

Mercedes

Mercedes predict "tough time" in Turkey as team "not in great shape"

Bottas and Hamilton struggled in low-grip conditions in practice

Ian Parkes

Saturday 14 November 2020 08:00

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Mercedes fear it may be in for "a tough time" this weekend after a day of struggle at the start of the Turkish Grand Prix.

The team has dominated Formula 1 this season, claiming pole position at all 13 races and winning 11 en route to recently securing a sixth consecutive constructors' championship, and with Lewis Hamilton on the brink of claiming a seventh drivers' crown.

But in a rare admission, Mercedes has conceded to being on the back foot and enduring difficulties in understanding the complex, slippery nature of the newly laid Istanbul Park circuit that was near-universally criticised by all the drivers after Friday's two practice sessions.

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Valtteri Bottas and Hamilton finished third and fourth quickest, with the latter just over half-a-second adrift of Max Verstappen in his Red Bull.

Chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin claimed the team had "not had an easy day", adding: "The track is clearly very low grip with the new surface and others are coping better with that than we are.

"We appear similarly offset on both low fuel and the long runs. It seems we find it harder than some to generate tyre temperature.

"Whilst we'd tried a few things during the sessions to improve this, the performance gap to Red Bull still remains and Ferrari also looked like they were often ahead of us.

"It's clearly very unusual conditions and there's a lot of interesting learning that we can take from the data, but we also have qualifying and a race, and at the moment we're not in great shape and are in for a tough time if we don't make significant progress."

Hamilton bemoaned the circuit as being like "an ice rink" and "terrifying" in nature, and as a result, he was unable to make any set-up changes across the three hours of practice.

"I've not changed a single thing on the car because if the tyres aren't working then you don't really know what the balance issue is. It's literally just the tyres," said Hamilton.

"You see people are getting them to work. You can go from one lap to the other and you can find a second because the tyres have worked in a couple of corners.

"You can see the Red Bulls have worked really well, and we've definitely got some work to do to see what we can change."

Before you go...

Ricciardo wary of criticising Turkish GP organisers over "frustrating" circuit

Tricky Turkey track can provide chance for smaller teams - Grosjean