Brawn encouraged by win in unfavourable conditions

2013 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn says his team’s third win of the year in hot conditions at the Hungaroring bodes well for the rest of the season.

“We genuinely didn’t know how the tyres would play out,” said Brawn after Lewis Hamilton’s victory. “It was much hotter today.”

“I think there’s lots of signs of encouragement there for the rest of the year but we can’t take it easy. But I think all the work the guys did to address that issue, that weakness in the car, we’ve made a step today. So it’s really good.”

“We’ve got some good races coming up, Spa and Monza, which I think will be pretty exciting, we’ve got some good developments on the car,” he added, “and then we’ll decide our programme after that because of course like every other team we’re juggling ’13 and ’14, we have to decide where we put our priorities, I think after the first two races after the break.”

Tyre use has been a major concern for Mercedes this year and Brawn admitted “I’m not sure you ever do get on top of them”.

“It’s a question of degree and if you do a better job than anyone else on the day. They are challenging, but perhaps that’s how Formula One should be.”

Brawn said Hamilton had been “frustrated” at not winning a race while team mate Nico Rosberg had won two. After ten races with the team, Brawn thinks Hamilton is still making progress with them:

“It’s another step. it’s the evolution that you have when someone, particularly someone of the ability of Lewis, joins the team. It takes a little while for everything to bed in. It certainly bedded in today.”

“Every race he’s getting a little bit more familiar, working with the engineers in a little more relaxed way, because at the start they didn’t know each other,” Brawn added. “It’s definitely progress.”

Rosberg dropped out of the race in the closing stages with an engine failure, which Brawn said caused some concern on the pit wall: “We had some concerns but in fact we hasn’t overheated the engines.”

“Nico has a slightly tougher time because he was following in traffic quite a bit but we were managing to keep it under control and under the limits. Because we couldn’t explain it, we didn’t know the reasons why, then of course you do get anxious. We could see the engine failure on the data but we couldn’t explain why.”

2013 Hungarian Grand Prix

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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8 comments on “Brawn encouraged by win in unfavourable conditions”

  1. Ross was defenitely a happy man today… It was no surprise that he decided to collect the Trophy for Merc….

  2. you just won the hottest circuit in 2013.

    Stop downplaying the expectations. The fans are behind you guys, just dominate the 2nd half of the season please!!!!

    1. But their problem might not be track temperature, it might be circuit layout.

      The Redbull was too strong, both in qualy and the race.
      So don’t know about dominating.

  3. Ok , Here is a quip :

    Do you know why the heat did not affect the race that much as predicted ?

    Because the fins were there :P

  4. Besides the astonishing performance of Lewis, i think part of it was due to race on clean air, that probably helped to keep in check everything on that Merc (engine, tires, brakes, whatnot), on the other side Nico was battling uphill and couldnt find pace on the mid of the pack and finished his race burning the engine.

    1. I can echo on that for logical and obvious reasons. However, it just hit me today why the private tire test in Barcelona was private and why Mercedes team was unharmed by not attending the young drivers’ test at Silverstone.
      I will start with some definitions of the word PRIVATE:

      a : intended for or restricted to the use of a particular person, group, or class a
      b : belonging to or concerning an individual person, company, or interest a
      c (1) : restricted to the individual or arising independently of others…

      Let us leave the definition of the word private aside and let us concentrate on the reasons why the test was private. That should give us a broader picture of how Pirelli was serving Mercedes to solve their PRIVATE issues.
      Their major issue was excessive operational temperature of the tires. I will explain it as briefly as possible how you come to that. The major cause of overheating the tire is deformation of the sidewal structure. The flow of energy trough the tire is explained by hysteresis loop. It represents the difference between the energy needed to deform the tire and the energy needed for the tire to return to its original shape – shortly, it is a consequence of tire’s elasticity. Engineers tackle this issue by suspension geometry. People at Mercedes know that. That’s the major reason why they modified gearbox casing to accomodate more changes of the rear suspension geometry. Obvious effort when you are trying to solve the tire overheating issue. But, when it commes to front suspension to change the picking points is not that easy. You are limited by monocoque design and your monouvring space is very limited. How can you solve that? Well… It’s easy! A PRIVATE TIRE TEST!!!
      Mercedes: “Paul, can you give us stronger structure of the sidewalls, our suspension is harsh on these tires?”
      Paul: “Of course, we can arrange a PRIVATE TIRE TEST!!!”
      Suddenly they have no tire issues at 50°C and previously 30 was a way to much. Interestingly enough, Kimi Raikkonen cannot bring heat to his tires at 50°C of tarmac temperature.
      There is only one word appropriately describing the whole situation: DISGUSTING!!!

      1. No offence, But how did this all “suddenly” hit you ?

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