The team has struggled all season to fully understand the car built to the latest F1 regulations. Occasional signs of promise encouraged him to stick with the narrow pontoon concept, while others gravitated in a common direction.
George Russell’s pole in Hungary followed by a second successive one-two finish for Lewis Hamilton and his young racing teammate led the team to believe they were beginning to understand the car.
“It’s helpful,” Shovlin said. “And this car has been particularly boring in the way it gives you insight into performance and what could be, at such a level that it’s very hard for us to just give it up. So it sucks you in a bit, from a technical point of view.
“It was a tricky car. And certainly part of the problem is just that we don’t have enough downforce, we have to find more downforce and find a bit more power. is a useful sign that we are heading in the right direction.
“The double podium, the pole position, these are all things that we could only have dreamed of at the start of the year. And it’s encouraging that we seem to be making progress.”
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Shovlin has made it clear that the team has no intention of moving away from their current aero package.
“I think it’s been helpful to see that this narrow-bodied car can perform well in racing,” he said.
“That’s definitely the thing we have to take as a basis for development. We’ll be more efficient if we work with what we have rather than trying to follow someone else’s design.
“But the sidepods are probably a bit of a distraction from the general issues that we had to deal with. If you think there are only three races, we were bouncing all over Montreal, Baku, Monaco.
“Now the riders come out and if they talk about bouncing it’s because they had a bit of it in a corner at some point. It is almost conspicuous by its absence. And we were able to apply these improvements to the current package, which is a good sign.
Shovlin admitted the team was unsure whether Russell’s pole in Budapest reflected a genuine improvement in form, or was more to do with Ferrari and Red Bull not being at their best. However, there has been a marked improvement in the Mercedes camp.
“One of the things that changed was that the drivers suddenly had the confidence in the car that they were missing. it just doesn’t make you feel like it’s going to stick, it just feels like it’s going to pull away from you.
“We didn’t really see our two do those kind of blinding laps until George got pole. And maybe that’s something we’ve improved on. And there are some changes to the car that were able to do that.
“The team did a good job of putting everything in the right window. But the honest answer is we don’t really know how we got pole.”
Shovlin said the knowledge gained in Hungary could be applied to upcoming races such as Spa and Monza, although the tracks are very different.
“To be honest, it’s the general process of engineering an F1 is that every race we learn, and at the end of the year we kind of tend to write everything in one place. And it’s impressive that even after 20 races you’re still discovering things.
“So I’m sure there will be pieces that we can take. But if you look, statistically, are we suddenly going to land it in that window every track, that could be a tall order.”
The team has struggled all season to fully understand the car built to the latest F1 regulations. Occasional signs of promise encouraged him to stick with the narrow pontoon concept, while others gravitated in a common direction.
George Russell’s pole in Hungary followed by a second successive one-two finish for Lewis Hamilton and his young racing teammate led the team to believe they were beginning to understand the car.
“It’s helpful,” Shovlin said. “And this car has been particularly boring in the way it gives you insight into performance and what could be, at such a level that it’s very hard for us to just give it up. So it sucks you in a bit, from a technical point of view.
“It was a tricky car. And certainly part of the problem is just that we don’t have enough downforce, we have to find more downforce and find a bit more power. is a useful sign that we are heading in the right direction.
“The double podium, the pole position, these are all things that we could only have dreamed of at the start of the year. And it’s encouraging that we seem to be making progress.”
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes W13
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Shovlin has made it clear that the team has no intention of moving away from their current aero package.
“I think it’s been helpful to see that this narrow-bodied car can perform well in racing,” he said.
“That’s definitely the thing we have to take as a basis for development. We’ll be more efficient if we work with what we have rather than trying to follow someone else’s design.
“But the sidepods are probably a bit of a distraction from the general issues that we had to deal with. If you think there are only three races, we were bouncing all over Montreal, Baku, Monaco.
“Now the riders come out and if they talk about bouncing it’s because they had a bit of it in a corner at some point. It is almost conspicuous by its absence. And we were able to apply these improvements to the current package, which is a good sign.
Shovlin admitted the team was unsure whether Russell’s pole in Budapest reflected a genuine improvement in form, or was more to do with Ferrari and Red Bull not being at their best. However, there has been a marked improvement in the Mercedes camp.
“One of the things that changed was that the drivers suddenly had the confidence in the car that they were missing. it just doesn’t make you feel like it’s going to stick, it just feels like it’s going to pull away from you.
“We didn’t really see our two do those kind of blinding laps until George got pole. And maybe that’s something we’ve improved on. And there are some changes to the car that were able to do that.
“The team did a good job of putting everything in the right window. But the honest answer is we don’t really know how we got pole.”
Shovlin said the knowledge gained in Hungary could be applied to upcoming races such as Spa and Monza, although the tracks are very different.
“To be honest, it’s the general process of engineering an F1 is that every race we learn, and at the end of the year we kind of tend to write everything in one place. And it’s impressive that even after 20 races you’re still discovering things.
“So I’m sure there will be pieces that we can take. But if you look, statistically, are we suddenly going to land it in that window every track, that could be a tall order.”