Mercedes' chances of winning in 2022 were fading fast after its Mexico miscue, but impressive pace in both the sprint race and practice in the BrazilGP suggest the Silver Arrows has a golden opportunity to end its drought 🎯 ✍️ mattkewF1 reveals all ⬇️
Despite Red Bull and Ferrari flying out of the gate while it suffered severely with porpoising and extreme drag, all the way to the summer break Mercedes insisted repeatedly that it could win a grand prix in 2022. But the opportunities to break that barren spell appeared to be running out. It was hurt by the late safety car at Zandvoort, couldn’t capitalise on a horrid pitstop for Max Verstappen in the United States and got its tyre strategy all wrong in Mexico.
As his team-mate scarpered off to a winning margin of four seconds, five laps later Hamilton pulled past a now-wounded Verstappen - the legacy of having his front wing bent in a duel with Carlos Sainz - over the timing line for third place. That would come to mark second on the grid, with Ferrari racer Sainz already down to serve a five-place penalty for using a fifth internal combustion engine of the season.
“I just was [degrading my tyres] way too hard,” said Verstappen. “Somehow, the mediums, they didn't last at all. We had no pace. But, even on the soft, I think we wouldn't have had the pace that Mercedes had. That's a little bit worrying for [the full GP]. I was just eating the tyres alive.” And after the trying experience on the mediums in the sprint, should Red Bull bypass the yellow tyres altogether for the race and consider the hard Pirellis for Verstappen, his early FP2 stint was 0.3s slower than Russell and 0.5s off Hamilton’s simulations on the same compound. For reference, again Perez’s times were top of the charts as he ran a slender five hundredths quicker still than the seven-time champion.
By way of brief comparison, consider Ferrari. After the disastrous team gamble to bet on intermediate tyres in Q3, putting Charles Leclerc down in 10th, he used the sprint race to decent effect to score sixth. That will become fifth on the grid once Sainz has served his penalty. He too was uncharitable about the “shit” medium tyres in FP2. His soft-compound times can add to that chagrin. In FP2, the Monegasque was 0.6s down on Russell and just sixth fastest.
One option being discussed by the drivers is for them to run different strategies to maximise the chances of covering off the Red Bull threat. As Russell commented: “We’ll race each other fairly, for sure. I'm sure we'll probably be splitting the strategies tomorrow to try and cover all options. And, you know, hopefully one of us comes away happy tomorrow. But I think we both recognise based on recent experience, we're probably going to have to go two separate ways.
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