Team Principal Ross Brawn admits Mercedes lagging pace
Mercedes GP team principal Ross Brawn has admitted that his team needs to find a whole second’s worth of speed in the car upgrades it plans to bring to the next Formula One test in Barcelona and the first race in Melbourne on March 27.
"We're about a second off where we want to be, which is at the front, so we've got to find a second in the upgrade which we think we can do," Brawn said.
The W02 car has clearly been off the pace in early testing, although it set some fast laps when running closer to low-fuel qualifying spec, making it difficult to assess the overall picture.
“It is very hard to judge because of different fuel weights,” Brawn said in a live interview with BBC Radio on Thursday. “Tires are going to be very important, and most sensible teams have been running with high fuel loads, because that’s where you get the highest [tire] degradation, that’s when you stress the tires the most, and that’s where you want to find a good solution. So it is difficult to judge [exactly where we are].”
Brawn insisted that Mercedes GP always intended to save its major upgrades for later in the winter as the team focused first on reliability. But on Thursday, he conceded that the plan might not work out.
“We said when we started [testing] that we had some things to learn on [kinetic-energy-recovery systems] and tires, and we were going to start with a fairly plain car, and you’ll see in Barcelona something quite different,” Brawn said. “We’re as quietly confident as we can be. We think our strategy is correct, to approach it the way we have, and we’ll all know when we get to the first race.
Brawn, who recently sold his remaining shareholding in the team to parent company Mercedes, said that far from diminishing his enthusiasm, the team's problems just made him more hungry for renewed success.
Brawn also said that Michael Schumacher has not lost faith in the team.
“He’s very motivated, very committed,” Brawn said. “That steely determination we often see with Michael is there in spades. And he’s also been part of the plan; he’s understood what we’ve been putting together.
“We may get egg on our face; we may turn up at Melbourne and it hasn’t come together. But we’re optimistic. He’s part of it, he knows what we’re doing, and he knows why we’re doing what we’re doing. And we’re going to have to wait and see.”
F1 legend Schumacher, 42, admitted last month that it would be "difficult" for Mercedes to win races at the start of the season.
Nick Fry gives thumbs up for Mercedes MGP W02
Mercedes have no reason to panic despite slow lap times and poor reliability in Formula One’s pre-season testing, team chief executive Nick Fry.
“Performance, obviously from what we’ve seen on the track, at the moment is not as good as we would like,” Fry told Reuters.
“But I think there are two major reasons for that,” he said before unveiling a Formula One installation at Mercedes-Benz World inside the old Brooklands circuit.
“One is that the car did have some cooling issues and has been running with a very sub-optimal cooling package and aerodynamic package, and that is (worth) a significant amount of (lap) time.
“Secondly, we went in (to testing) with a slightly different strategy of having what we called the basic car to start with and what we think will be a significant upgrade for the first race,” he added.
“So we knew we were going to be not the quickest, let’s put it that way.
“We are not panicking, we have a plan, we’re sticking to it and I think that we will be in a reasonable shape by the time we get to Australia,” Fry said.
“The truth of the matter is that the extra time has helped everyone, possibly with the exception of Ferrari who seem to be going very well and very reliably from the start,” Fry said.
“It would be untruthful to say it’s not been a help — it’s been a help to us and I suspect to many of the other teams as well.”
“I think the good news is that the reliability is coming,” said Fry.
“Obviously at the first test it wasn’t so good, but subsequently it’s got better and better and I think we were up there in terms of the most mileage covered — which is important at this time of the year.
“There will be some differences in Barcelona as well. I think you will see an improving trend and we are far from panicking.”
Michael Schumacher is high on Spirit
Last month, Michael had commented of lagging pace by Mercedes. But he is still in high spirit to win again. He wants to add 8th world championship to his title and he will be working hard for it.
As far as car is gaining reliability. If that would be the situation then, Michael would surely come back to winning ways.
“Michael understands the situation and all racing drivers want to be the fastest from the start. That’s in their nature,” Nick Fry said.
“The feedback I’ve got is that Michael’s application during testing has been fantastic and he’s been doing a great job developing the car. We are all working together and the proof of the pudding will be in Australia.”
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