Mercedes team thinks that they will face difficulties in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which will be held on September 13-15.
These are related to the characteristics of race tracks, Idman.biz reports.
But according to the concern's chief race engineer Andrew Shovlin, everything is being done to perform as well as possible in all stages of the rest of the season.
"Baku’s always been a really difficult circuit to guess where you’re going to fall in the order. The other issue you’ve got this year is any given track you can end up with at least three if not four teams all within a tenth or two of each other, that makes it very hard to predict where they’re all going to fall in qualifying and where people will stack out in race pace. We would expect McLaren to be quick, we’ve also seen Ferrari recently put in some strong performance and you’d never ever discount Red Bull," said Shovlin.
"It is challenging but Baku is an unusual circuit because you’ve got this really tight, twisty, very low speed sector two, and then this really long straight. It requires a relatively low wing level, that isn’t what you’d normally have with all those low-speed corners, but you’ve got to have it with the long straight. It’s also a weekend where you can get a lot of incidents affecting the race, it’s very easy if a driver makes a mistake there that will have to bring out a safety car in order to clear it up. We haven’t been pleased with our last couple of weekends, we’re aiming higher than that. We were hoping to start this final part of the season in the same manner that we finished with a few race wins and some strong qualifying and all of our effort is going into trying to get the maximum performance and trying to get back to weekends where we can come back pleased with the job we’ve done, hopefully, come back with some trophies," he explained.
The engineer also evaluated the balance of forces in Baku: "We expect McLaren to go fast, but recently we see that Ferrari is increasing as well. Also, Red Bull can never be written off."
Idman.biz
