Mercedes took note of Verstappen’s out-lap tactics after stunning Suzuka pole position

Mercedes regretted not mimicking Max Verstappen’s out-lap tactics which led to his surprise pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix last weekend.

The team’s technical director James Allison noted the Red Bull driver’s tyre preparation in Q3 last weekend was the opposite to what they advised for George Russell.

While Russell kept his tyre temperatures down for the start of his lap, to ensure they did not overheat, Verstappen focused on ensuring he had warm rubber for the sinuous opening sector, where he gained valuable time. Verstappen snatched pole position by a hundredth of a second while Russell could only manage fifth place.

Allison admitted they got their tactics wrong for the final phase of qualifying following the changes made to the Suzuka circuit this year. “They resurfaced half the track,” he explained in a video released by Mercedes. “In fact the bit that got most of the new asphalt is the opening sector, that very, very fast challenging turn one, two, and then up through the Esses.

“The main challenge that fresh asphalt gives you is that it’s much harder to get the tyres warm and running at a temperature where they grip the fresh asphalt. Then you get onto the older part of the circuit where the asphalt’s all rough and there the tyres will easily overheat. So a driver is trying to find the right compromise between being able to get round the first part of the circuit and have something that’s not overheating at the end of the circle.

“In general, they need to hit the last bit of their out-lap with quite a lot of vigour in order that the tyre is good in turn one, two and up through the Esses on the new asphalt. But you might pay for that a bit later in the lap.”

Mercedes advised Russell not to follow his preference to start the lap with higher tyre temperatures, which Allison admits was a mistake. “On our final run – and it was definitely not the right thing to do – we urged a slightly cooler start to the lap for George,” he said. “He felt, no, that’s not what I need to do, I need to be hitting it hard.

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“The consequence was the tyre wasn’t ready in that first part of the lap. So we lost a load of time there, which meant it was sort of irrelevant what happened in the second part of the lap. We never got the benefit there either because the lap was just uncompetitive.

“If you looked at the cars that prospered – and indeed the lap that Max pulled out the bag to take a pretty impressive pole, he really hammered the last sector of his out-lap, really getting the tyres in good, warm shape so that he could attack the first part of the lap and then just try to hang on in the second part. We should have done that. And if we had done that, we would have definitely been better-placed on the grid.”

Teams will encounter a much rougher track surface this weekend in Bahrain, which Allison believes will play into McLaren’s hands.

“We can expect that it will be a track that is going be way harder on tyre degradation than the other tracks we’ve been at so far,” said Allison. “The asphalt there is very, very coarse and rough.

“The asphalt is quite old – in fact, it’s older than Kimi [Antonelli]. The track hasn’t been resurfaced for a long, long time. The consequence is as asphalt gets older it gets more jaggedy. And that jaggedy asphalt cut the tyres up. It also makes the tyres overheat far more easily.

“So we can expect that this weekend will be a very challenging one from the point of view of managing rear tyre temperatures and front tyre temperatures, and managing the degradation rate of the tyres by really trying to look after them around the lap.

“If we look across the grid I would say that the McLarens probably have this as an advantage over the rest of the teams. But from the winter testing and the pace we saw relative to the Red Bull and the Ferrari, then we absolutely think we can be in there pitching for a podium and maybe better if the orange cars slip up.”

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