Mercedes wants to liquidate the World Cup: improvements begin in Malaysia
The silver arrows seem destined to regain their throne at the top of both world championships for the first time since 2020 for the drivers’ championship and since 2021 for the constructors’ championship. To ensure that they do not escape them, improvements will come “from Malaysia onwards”according to the verbatim words of the director of engineers on the track mercedesAndrew Shovlin, on the team’s own podcast.
So much McLaren as Ferrari They have introduced improvements to their cars that have helped them close the advantage that Mercedes had at the beginning of the season. The first ten races had pole for one of the Brackley guys, but in the last four races, between Lando Norris and Pierre Gasly They have spoiled the party in classification. In the race they have achieved four victories out of the last eight.
The Scuderia He has already used his two upgrades ADUO for the engine, the last of them came in Monza and in Austria they had not only improved the engine, but also the aerodynamic components of their car. For its part, McLaren It has the same engine as Mercedes and, as they have come to understand how it works, they have achieved better results after a disappointing start to the season plagued by reliability problems.
Although both those from Maranello and those from Woking have approached, and Verstappen It can always cause problems, the Mercedes are being very dominant this season. But with the improvements they hope to be even more so, especially in classification, which is where they are having the most problems. “I don’t think we’re going to have a kilometer distance.but we hope to be back in a position where we can go into qualifying knowing that we can fight for pole,” explains Shovlin.
The improvements seem to be focused on the area of ​​aerodynamics, since for the next test, Baku, they will not bring too many new features. The Azerbaijan GP is characterized by its long main straight, so the cars have very similar settings to those at Monza to have the least possible aerodynamic drag. “The car went well at Monza, let’s hope it goes well in Baku. But you need a car that has good speed on straights.”
Kimi Antonelli has a comfortable distance of 81 points over the other Mercedes of George Russell and 101 points ahead of Lewis Hamilton. In constructors, those from Barkley beat Ferrari 145. By simply maintaining these distances in the championships thanks to the improvements, Antonelli would be world champion with three races to spare and Mercedes would win the constructors’ championship with two.
