Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, Interlagos, 2023

Mercedes’ Brazilian GP set-up was “conservative” after US GP disqualification

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In the round-up: Mercedes admit they took a more conservative approach to their car set-up at the Brazilian Grand Prix following Lewis Hamilton’s disqualification two races earlier.

In brief

Mercedes were “conservative after Austin”

The Brazilian Grand Prix was the first sprint race weekend since Hamilton’s disqualification for excessive plank wear in the Austin round. With only a single practice session to set their car up, Mercedes were anxious to avoid a repeat and played it safe by raising their ride height.

Mercedes’ head of vehicle performance Riccardo Musconi admitted this was a contributory factory behind the team’s poor performance at Interlagos.

“First of all we were faced again with an enigma of tyres,” he said in a video released by the team. “We can see them switching on and off within a few degrees, so it’s very, very difficult to be on top of them.

“The second thing was the degradation. We were not at the best end of it as we normally are, so that’s a new thing for us to explore and understand.

“The third thing was that we were perhaps too conservative with the ride heights after Austin. Possibly, and part of the answer may be there, but we don’t think that explains the full picture as we saw it unfolding at the weekend.”

Hulkenberg says Haas had “no performance”

Although he claimed his second-best regular qualifying result in nine rounds, then qualified 12th for the sprint race, Nico Hulkenberg said he had “no performance” with his Haas VF-23 in Brazil.

He finished the 24-lap sprint race down in 18th and a minute behind the winner, and was a lapped 12th in the grand prix after a dramatic start which eliminated team mate Kevin Magnussen.

“It was a typical start situation where it got too tight there, and it was very similar to what happened to me in the sprint in Qatar, I got sandwiched. You can’t really bail out at that point, so I made contact with [Alex] Albon which then put him into Kevin,” said Hulkenberg. “There was damage but the red flag allowed us to repair it, so the car was fine, there was just no performance this weekend.”

GB3 runner-up joins Macau grid

Alex Dunne will make his Formula 3 debut in next weekend’s Macau Grand Prix. The Irish 17-year-old was last year’s British Formula 4 champion and Italian F4 runner-up, then this year came second in the GB3 championship with Hitech GP. He will stay with the team for the FIA F3 World Cup appearance.

ART Grand Prix has announced a change in their line-up for the event, with Gregoire Saucy vacating the number 21 car and being replaced by Nyck de Vries’ protege Laurens van Hoepen who was 10th in this year’s Formula Regional European Championship.

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Comment of the day

Max Verstappen’s list of accomplishments in F1 continued to grow at the Brazilian Grand Prix, but Jere found some other notable statistics from the weekend noted by RaceFans readers.

For the first time since the 2018 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Bottas attended a race weekend without facial hair, albeit he still had the mullet.

The second consecutive Sao Paulo Grand Prix with pole position celebrated in the garage rather than on track.
Jere

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to George, Adrian Hancox and Cristofer Lima!

On this day in motorsport

  • Born today in 1973: Future McLaren and Lotus team principal Eric Boullier

Author information

Ida Wood
Often found in junior single-seater paddocks around Europe doing journalism and television commentary, or dabbling in teaching photography back in the UK. Currently based...

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10 comments on “Mercedes’ Brazilian GP set-up was “conservative” after US GP disqualification”

  1. Ah CotD, these are the stats that matter, thank you!

    leaving the growing sim racing community without a way to fall in love with it. Which is where EA comes in.

    Haha, that’s a crack up… I could almost understand the argument, until the mention of the sim racing community. While sim racing is a subset of gaming, EA will never be their saviour, by design. Sad that a site dedicate to racing games coverage is not aware of that.

  2. Another good Players’ Tribunal article by an F1 driver.

    The Wall Street Journal: Not necessarily everything has been built up over a few months, though, as I saw images in September with nothing yet done around the Strip section or the preceding & following corners, but merely on the S/F straight & the top-left section.

    I didn’t expect my trivial stat note to get a COTD honor & for that matter I’ve just generally noticed that many drivers never or rarely appear on race weekends without facial hair since around 2010, which can’t be a mere coincidence.

    1. I didn’t expect my trivial stat note to get a COTD honor & for that matter I’ve just generally noticed that many drivers never or rarely appear on race weekends without facial hair since around 2010, which can’t be a mere coincidence.

      Maybe the removal of the Bottas fur is connected to the arrival of the James Key ‘tache?

      I think your stat was a valid item, do you happen to know the number of laps Bottas has done with facial hair?
      Is he the GOAT for fur? People want to know… ;)

      1. Counting every single racing lap he did from the 2019 Australian GP opening lap until the Mexico City GP final lap would take quite a while, lol.

  3. Interesting colebration with Gundam but fitting for a Japanese driver :) So they can use blasters too that would fun in Vegas.

  4. Coventry Climax
    9th November 2023, 10:58

    FIA, ACO admitting their Hypercar BoP process needs improvement, with series executives having stressed that competitors must not rest solely on the process.
    So apparently, competitors now do rely on it solely?
    Means to me the best improvement would be to do away with it altogether: With racing over show again, that just might even make me consider to follow the series again.

    Ah, the Coventry Transport Museum.
    Nice name 😛, nice visit.

    1. So apparently, competitors now do rely on it solely?

      No doubt there have been behind-the-scenes talks about how the FIA/ACO is currently failing to have a competitive Hypercar class. Toyota, especially after their moaning about losing Le Mans, has dominated most of the season. That’s not what Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Peugeot and others signed up to.

      It’ll always be harder to balance performance over an endurance-length race than a single lap, as cars can be equally quick but then have very different tyre-handling characteristics. Same in F1, where Red Bull is not that much better in qualifying but absolutely miles ahead of anyone else in the race.

      So the FIA/ACO probably want some teams – mostly Peugeot probably – to make changes to their cars as well. This is a bit unfortunate, because the idea of the ‘performance caps’ was that there would be many different ‘solutions’ and thus different kinds of cars, that would (visually) match real road-going cars. But it’s starting to look like Hypercar cars will instead become very similar because there is no other way the FIA/ACO can come up with a workable BoP.

      1. Coventry Climax
        10th November 2023, 0:04

        Toyota, especially after their moaning about losing Le Mans, has dominated most of the season. That’s not what Porsche, Ferrari, BMW, Peugeot and others signed up to.

        Isn’t that the same then, as teams relying on it all being arranged for them, through BoP?

        You can explain all you like, but 1: I know how the system works and 2) I simply detest such fake systems. It’s like giving faster runners heavier shoes, so others have a chance too, which would otherwise be so sad and sorry for them as they too paid their entrance fee. Cow dung. That’s not sports.

  5. I thought Toto said he would always risk the chance of disqualification vs removing performance from their cars?

  6. Would it really pain the FIA to allow the drivers an extra 30 mins of set up time? The restriction to set up is the biggest hinderance to the sprint weekend. In quick succesion we have two race spoilt because of the time allowed to set up the cars correctly. They have 60 mins and then that’s it, they are stuck in parc ferme barring an accident allowing them to rebuild the car.

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