Mercedes further behind than they expected on bogey track

Whereas once Singapore was the circuit which caught Mercedes out, lately Mexico’s oddball venue has been their undoing.

The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez has a couple of long straights which might demand Monza-level wings if it wasn’t over two kilometres above sea level. Instead the thin air means the teams have to run their biggest wings just to achieve Monza levels of downforce.

On top of that the track surface is very low in grip, partly due to the dust and debris which inevitably accumulates on a circuit nestled in the centre of a city home to millions. The low air density means less downforce which makes it harder to energise the tyres and to cool the cars.

Mercedes have struggled more at this circuit relative to their rivals than most other venues. They arrived this weekend expecting to trail Ferrari and Red Bull, and after Friday practice Valtteri Bottas admitted their deficit was “bigger than we expected at this point the weekend”.

While all of the teams struggle with tyre graining, Mercedes seem to be particularly afflicted by it. And team principal Toto Wolff expects Ferrari in particular will pull even further ahead of them on Saturday.

“You can see that the Ferrari on the Saturday is almost unbeatable,” he said. “They’re able to up their game from Friday to Saturday. Once all the power kicks in that they have available it’s very difficult to compensate for the loss of straight line [speed].”

He does, however, remain hopeful the picture may be different in the race. “They seem to have the strongest car on Saturday. Then when it comes to racing on Sunday, the Red Bull and the Mercedes are maybe a tiny bit more competitive at some of the races. Not the high speed tracks that we’ve seen, but all the others we seem to be crawling back a little bit.”

On the face of it, qualifying may well produce a two-by-two line-up among the top three teams: Ferrari followed by Red Bull (assuming Alexander Albon bounces back from his second practice crash) and Mercedes. However the relatively short lap time at this track can introduce a little variability. We may also see more of the Q3 tactics which occured at Spa and Monza, as drivers vie for a tow down the huge start/finish straight.

Temperatures are expected to rise over the rest of the weekend which means teams will have to make careful decisions about their cooling packages on Saturday. This too is an area where Mercedes have been weak compared to the competition this year.

The midfield fight was led, surprisingly, by Toro Rosso, who looked in great shape on Friday. McLaren appear quick again, meaning Renault may find it tricky to get into Q3.

Another team which, like Mercedes, can count this venue as a bogey track is Haas. “Last year we came with the fourth of fifth fastest card [and] we were 17th and 18th on the grid,” said Romain Grosjean on Friday. “This year we come with the ninth fastest car – if you make the calculation, we’ll start 26th and 27th or something like that.”

His pessimistic assessment was pretty well borne out on Friday. Haas are indeed the ninth-quickest team, though not too far behind Alfa Romeo, and well ahead of the struggling Williams pair.

Longest stint comparison – second practice

This chart shows all the drivers’ lap times (in seconds) during their longest unbroken stint. Very slow laps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, right-click to reset:

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Combined practice times

Pos	Driver	Car	FP1	FP2	Total laps
1	Sebastian Vettel	Ferrari	1’18.218	1’16.607	55
2	Max Verstappen	Red Bull-Honda	1’17.461	1’16.722	54
3	Charles Leclerc	Ferrari	1’17.446	1’17.072	57
4	Valtteri Bottas	Mercedes	1’18.005	1’17.221	64
5	Lewis Hamilton	Mercedes	1’17.327	1’17.570	60
6	Daniil Kvyat	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’18.835	1’17.747	67
7	Alexander Albon	Red Bull-Honda	1’17.949	1’21.665	26
8	Pierre Gasly	Toro Rosso-Honda	1’18.593	1’18.003	62
9	Carlos Sainz Jnr	McLaren-Renault	1’18.401	1’18.079	59
10	Nico Hulkenberg	Renault	1’19.011	1’18.261	45
11	Lando Norris	McLaren-Renault	1’19.299	1’18.349	59
12	Lance Stroll	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’19.679	1’18.362	59
13	Sergio Perez	Racing Point-Mercedes	1’19.717	1’18.366	57
14	Daniel Ricciardo	Renault	1’19.499	1’18.380	57
15	Kimi Raikkonen	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’19.205	1’18.681	59
16	Romain Grosjean	Haas-Ferrari	1’19.850	1’18.766	59
17	Antonio Giovinazzi	Alfa Romeo-Ferrari	1’18.959	1’18.889	68
18	Kevin Magnussen	Haas-Ferrari	1’19.013	1’19.306	59
19	George Russell	Williams-Mercedes	1’20.548	1’19.968	62
20	Robert Kubica	Williams-Mercedes		1’20.180	37
21	Nicholas Latifi	Williams-Mercedes	1’21.566		30

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Teams’ progress vs 2018

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Quotes: Dieter Rencken

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