Mercedes walking fine Qatar tightrope with tricky W15

Mercedes has detailed the fine tightrope it will be walking with its W15 machine in the Qatar Grand Prix. 

Drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell are optimistic that the smooth Lusail circuit will play to the strengths of the package after a dominant one-two last time out in Las Vegas. 

Both the Las Vegas and Qatar circuits are smooth, which allows the team to run the ride height closer to the ground, generating more performance which puts the car into a window to allow it to challenge for wins. 

Heading to Qatar, technical director James Allison has detailed the fine line the team must navigate to get its car in the right window. 

“It is with a degree of trepidation that I would venture any opinion about what is going to come in Qatar,” he said.

“What I would say is that this season has shown repeatedly the virtuous circle that there is between car balance and tyre degradation. Get the car nicely balanced, and you will tend to have the tyres working well for you. 

“If the tyres are then working well for you, they tend to make the car balance feel good, and it just goes in a lovely direction for you. The same is true in reverse. Get the car balance out of whack, and the tyres die horribly, making the balance worse and worse.

“If we can achieve the sort of sweet balance that we had in Las Vegas, we will have a great weekend. If we do not, we will not. I would say that there are aspects of Qatar that would lend us some encouragement.

“Like Vegas, it is a very smooth track. The corner that we were mighty in in Vegas was turn three. There are lots of turn three-type corners in Qatar, and there is not a huge amount of slow stuff in Qatar.

“We should be able to get the car reasonably in its window, but we have been wrong before, we are going there cautiously optimistic, hoping that we can get through these last couple of races in the year with Qatar being at the strong end of our performance.”