Although Lewis Hamilton was runner-up on Friday’s timesheet at Silverstone, it is Mercedes long-run pace that has the Brackley squad hopeful.
After Friday’s opening damp squib of a practice hour, the Formula 1 teams laid down the laps in the afternoon where Hamilton was second quickest behind Carlos Sainz.
The Brit, running his updates W13 with its new front suspension, floor and sidepod inlets, was just 0.163s slower than the Ferrari driver.
As for the long-run pace, F1.com’s data suggests that Red Bull have the edge over Ferrari by 0.21s with Mercedes around 0.67s off the pace.
The Brackley squad believe they are closer than that.
“It felt pretty good,” said Hamilton, while George Russell described it as “pretty promising”.
He added: “We were significantly faster than them [McLaren] and when the tyres were warm at the end, we were even faster than Ferrari. They dropped a bit at the end, but we improved lap after lap.”
https://t.co/42XicoYcrC‘s data suggests that Red Bull Racing have the edge over Scuderia Ferrari on long run pace. 0.21s behind, whilst Mercedes are around 0.67s off the pace – but the word inside the paddock is that the Silver Arrows are ultimately a fair bit closer than that. pic.twitter.com/fVnJKH7RZu
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Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin added: “Normally we see the sort of gap half a second, maybe even seven or eight tenths to the faster teams on a long run. And that didn’t look like it was there.
“Probably a bit it’s the circuit suiting the car.”
But while Mercedes may have the pace come Sunday’s race, Russell is a little worried still about how they will perform in qualifying.
While Red Bull and Ferrari are expected to fight for the front row, Lando Norris wasn’t far off Hamilton’s pace in FP2 over a single lap.
Russell said: “McLaren was pretty strong on one lap and we can’t get the tyres to work. But we’re in a good window over the race. It’s always a matter of balance, of course, but you can’t put everything on the Sunday card.”
As for Mercedes’ porpoising problems, Hamilton said as per Motorsport.com: “It still bounces quite a bit. Not necessarily on the straights, but in the corners.”
Shovlin says Turns 9 and 15 were where it was at its worse on Friday.
“We struggled at Turn 9 and we had some bouncing at Turn 15 too,” he said, “but those are things we’ll look at when we get back to the…
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