The United States Grand Prix is a Sprint event once again this year, which is bad new for the team like Mercedes who have brought significant upgrades with them to Austin.
Lewis Hamilton has his fingers crossed that Mercedes will get lucky – or it will be “pretty impossible” to do well in Austin this weekend.
Mercedes are one of the few teams to be bringing their final performance boosting package of the season to Texas. However, since Sprint format is in practice it was only available to practice their new parts and set up their cars for Friday before they immediately moved to practice the race for the short-form qualifying.
And Hamilton, 39, highly doubts his team will get the most out of his updated car at the United States Grand Prix. He said: “It is pretty impossible unless you are just lucky and [the upgrade] works from the get-go.
Last year we came here and I did not have to change much and the balance was sweet from the get-go. Nine and a half times out of 10, that is not the case. It is difficult but everyone is in the same boat. That puts a lot of pressure and a lot of focus on simulation.
“Simulations have not been ideal in the past year or so but we are constantly working on them. Some others put their car on the track and it just works straight away. We are hoping that we have definitely made more than enough mistakes and hopefully we will be able to start on a better platform.”
Hamilton also complained during the year that Mercedes have been ‘out of phase’ with their competitors when it comes to the timing of their upgrades. Younger team-mate George Russell, 26, is more positive how things could turn in Austine.
Mercedes’ last big upgrade package during the Belgian Grand Prix back in July was not a success but Russell believes that is not the case anymore. However, he concedes that other teams will still have a pace advantage over the Silver Arrows when racing at the Circuit of the Americas.
Russell said: “We went back in with the changes that we took to Spa.” In effect we are actually coming in today with two movements, with this upgrade. We are hoping it is going to have quite an impact.”
I want, with the upgrade we are in the fight again at least in the qualifying, for those top four places, and in the race, for that podium place. Realistically, everyone understands that right now McLaren and Red Bull are on test level higher than the rest of the field.”
Lando Norris won in Singapore race last month and is eyeing to repeat his performance for this coming weekend’s race in Texas. Indeed speaking after the race and looking at how we performed here last year and potentially how we should have performed over the last three, four or even five races, I believe in McLarens in confidence that we should be towards the top.