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Mercedes promise to analyse everything objectively from difficult Monaco

Mercedes promise to "analyse everything objectively" from difficult Monaco

23-05-2021 18:09
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Mercedes compounded a difficult Saturday in Monte Carlo with more mistakes during the 2021 Monaco Grand Prix. As a result of that, and Red Bull's strong performance, Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes lose the lead in their World Championships. Andrew Shovlin says the team will "analyse everything objectively".

Strategy error

Mercedes made some great strategy moves in the Spanish Grand Prix, but it didn't go well in Monaco. Mercedes opted to pit Hamilton early in the race, but the undercut wasn't the option to go for. Sergio Perez and Sebastian Vettel jumped the British driver after the pitstops finished. Meanwhile, Valtteri Bottas was stuck in the pits with a tyre stuck on the car. Shovlin, Mercedes trackside engineer, explains. 

"A really difficult day for the team and lots of areas that we need to look at but we'll come away from here and analyse everything objectively. Retiring a car with an issue at a pitstop is clearly not good enough, the nut was damaged to the point where it was never going to come off so we had no option but to park the car. However, our pace wasn't good enough to challenge Max as we were losing grip towards the end of the stint on soft and couldn't keep up," Shovlin said in the Mercedes press release. 
 
"With Lewis, it was always going to be a difficult Sunday because we didn't get him far enough up the grid on Saturday. However, we'd hoped to move forward but our attempt at an undercut failed and Lewis was then helpless as he got dragged back with Gasly whilst other cars overcut them both."

The future

The nature of Monaco's slow corners didn't help Mercedes during the weekend. The next race takes place in the streets of Baku, where Shovlin hopes to find better results. 

"We've got a busy week ahead of us as we need to get on top of many of our issues ahead of the next race in Baku. However, our difficult days always lead to us learning and improving and we're looking forward to getting back to the race track in few days' time," he concluded.