Mercedes expects “very hardcore” Red Bull battle if track is warmer

George Russell won the short race after passing Max Verstappen, who struggled with his medium tyres compared to the Briton’s softs.

Russell and Lewis Hamilton will start from the front row today, with Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez immediately behind.

Although Mercedes showed great pace in the sprint, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin cautioned that potentially warmer conditions could favour the Milton Keynes team in the grand prix itself.

“If we look at all the data we’ve had over the entire year, Max is going to be quick tomorrow,” Shovlin said. “If the track is warmer, it will probably help some of their issues.

“They looked like they were front-limited, that problem is going to diminish a bit. And also they won’t be on the wrong tyre. We’ve all got to run a medium or a hard as well as the soft. So we’re expecting a tougher battle.

“But we couldn’t have got ourselves in a better position today. It’s great to have both cars at the front. And recently, we’ve had decent race pace.

“So we’ll see what we can do. We don’t expect it to be anything other than a very, very hardcore battle. But we’re trying desperately hard to get our first win.”

Verstappen was compromised by starting on the medium tyre, which didn’t work as well as the softs used by his rivals.

“It doesn’t follow that they were unaware that the medium was a weak tyre,” said Shovlin of the choice.

“It might be that they knew it was a weak tyre, and they’re getting it out of the way today, rather than having to run two of those tomorrow. So I suspect it was strategically the lesser of two evils.”

Shovlin said that the team had found a “good window” with the W14 on Saturday.

“If you look a sprint race in general, you’ve got one hour where you’re free to change the set-up, and then you’re locked in when you roll out for qualifying,” he said when asked by Motorsport.com about the impressive sprint performance.

“And it goes without saying that if you get the set-up right to start, you’re in a good position. The car was working reasonably well, the track was quite tricky on Friday.

“This morning we didn’t feel that we were in great shape, with quite a lot of rear overheating, and possibly the cooler conditions suited us today.

“We thought it would definitely help some of the problems. But it just seemed to fall in a good window. And we obviously had both cars on the right tyre, which…