Hi, I’m Andrew Shovlin,
I’m Trackside Engineering Director,
and I’m here to answer your questions
about the German Grand Prix.
So, how are we holding up?
Well, it’s not the first time we have
had a bad race and we have
learnt over time how to deal
with them properly. But, the
important thing is really
what we do here on forward.
So, today has been a day where
we have been looking at what
happened over the weekend.
It wasn’t all strategy, also the car
wasn’t as quick as we’d hoped
it would be. And those are two
big areas that we have put a
lot of focus on today. But, in
terms of the strategy, it’s been
really unpicking the decision
making, looking at what we knew
at the time, what we should’ve
known, what should’ve been on
our radar and really why we got
lulled into making some decisions
that turned out to be quite bad decisions.
What went wrong?
Well, quite a lot actually.
But, this was a difficult race,
this is about as difficult as they
come from a strategy position
because you are not dealing with a
wet start going to dry or a dry start
going to wet. This is a race where the
water levels were constantly changing,
the track was getting faster and
slower and the right tyre to be on
was changing at different times.
Now, in those races, you have
essentially got to gamble on what’s
going to happen in the future.
Is it going to get wetter?
Is there going to be a Safety Car?
And it was on those gambles, those decisions,
that we weren’t making best use of the information
available to us, but also in some of it the
events just didn’t really go our way.
Now, if you look at it in a strategy sense,
no one actually did the right strategy.
The right strategy would’ve been to go
from the X at the start to the Inter,
to take a new Inter at the Safety Car
and then to do what Stroll did
at the end, where he’s coming in
and fitting a Soft tyre while the
Safety Car is still out, being the first
car on dry and then racing that
to the finish. So, the fact that no
one made all the right decisions
shows how difficult it was but
certainly we are looking at the
decisions that we made because
we know that they weren’t good
enough and that was why we ended
up with such a bad result.
So, this question is about
Lewis’s tyre choice when we
put him onto the Soft tyre.
But, the conversation we were
having with him was actually
about the Medium. We thought
it was going to get drier, that’s
what we were reading into the
weather forecast and the Medium
was the only tyre we were comfortable
taking to the end. Lewis was
actually saying that tyre is too
hard, and that was why we put him
on the Soft tyre. We know now that
we should’ve been having the
conversation about going to the
Intermediate tyre but at the time
what we were discussing with Lewis
was just Medium or Soft.
There was a lot of chaos when
Lewis came in, but we were in
the pits ready for Valtteri.
Now, he decided to stay out.
At the same time, Lewis had gone
off track, hit the wall, broke the
front wing. He came in.
We could see that he was coming in,
but it takes the guys a little while
to get the different tyres out.
But, also, we had this broken nose
and we can’t lift the car on that to
do the normal change with the jack.
So, we had to get different kit out to do
that.
Now, it looked messy.
There was a change of driver on the
tyre call, we also changed the tyre spec
from a Soft to an Intermediate tyre and
getting the communication through to
the guys when everything is so chaotic
is very difficult. We are aware it wasn’t
pretty, the guys in the pits actually did
a really good job reacting to that,
we at least got the right tyres on
the right car. But those situations
are very difficult, and they are not
rehearsed, they are not the ones we
practice. But it does show us where
we need to be stronger in the future.
We did talk about serving the
penalty under the Safety Car,
but we were concerned we’d drop
behind some midfield cars, we weren’t
sure how quickly we would clear them.
But, with hindsight it would’ve been
better to do that. That would’ve been
better than what we did. However,
the really clever decision would’ve
been to do something very similar
to Stroll. We would’ve come in
before the Safety Car had finished,
serve the penalty, fitted the Soft
tyres, but we would’ve been one
of the first cars on Soft tyres and
that would’ve actually given us
the best result overall.
Both the cars spun in Turn 1 as
you saw. There were two reasons.
One, the balance was a little bit
oversteer-ey for the conditions,
we obviously hadn’t run in those cold,
damp conditions during the weekend,
we didn’t get it quite right.
But there was also the dry line
and then a damp patch and with both
of them, they just got a wheel on
there, lost a lot of grip and it triggered
it into the spin. However, they were
both pushing very hard at that point,
having to take risks, trying to make
sure we could recover positions and
it just didn’t work out for us on the day.
With these races, you can’t really plan
ahead.
You only need to look at what happened
in terms of the rain getting heavier,
the number of Safety Cars, the VSCs.
Even starting the race, we didn’t know
whether it would be behind a
Safety Car or not, which changes
our tyre choice. What we are trying
to do is just look at the conditions,
look at what’s happening with the weather.
Also, look at our competitors,
see what tyres they are on,
decide whether we want to
cover them or whether we want
to take a gamble and go on a
different tyre. But it isn’t like a normal
strategy where you know you are
going in there wanting to do two stops,
you know what gaps you want to build.
This is really just a case of looking at
what’s happening and making the
decisions based on that, lap by lap.
Thank you for all of your questions.
We’re going to be back next week answering
more of them from the Hungarian Grand Prix.
