F1: Mercedes Can Have A Strong Race, Brawn Insists

Formula 1

F1: Mercedes Can Have A Strong Race, Brawn Insists

Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn is optimistic about Sunday's Chinese Grand Prix...

Adam Cooper | http://www.speedtv.com | Posted April 14, 2012 Shanghai (CHN)

"The arrival of a driver of Lewis’ caliber is a testament to the standing of Mercedes-Benz in Formula One," says Mercedes team boss Ross Brawn of Lewis Hamilton. (Photo: LAT Photographic)

Team boss Ross Brawn is confident that Mercedes can follow up on its qualifying performance in Shanghai with a strong showing in the race – despite the disappointments on Sunday in Australia and Malaysia.

Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher start from the front row, and both have saved a set of soft tires.

“I think one of the interesting things that was illustrated today was the narrow window that these tires have in terms of their temperature window and their optimum working range,” said Brawn after qualifying.

“If we can hit that sweet spot, then we should have a good race tomorrow. But as you saw with Sebastian (Vettel) today, if you don’t quite get it right it makes it difficult.

“We’ve made a fair commitment this weekend to try and get the car in the best shape we can for the race, and then qualifying as with all teams I think comes as a second consideration. If we can carry over what we saw with our high fuel run, then we can have some confidence that we can have a better race tomorrow. I’m not so confident that we can enjoy the advantage we had today, particularly with Nico, but I’m certainly optimistic that we can have a decent race tomorrow.”

Brawn gave some fascinating insight into the challenge of keeping on top of the tire temperature issue, and suggested that the situation would be more manageable than in the past two races.

“It is tricky, and you almost have to follow it and track it,” he said. “There’s very little you can change before or during a race. Tire pressures are free, front wing setting you’re allowed to change. There’s nothing else you can change on the car, so with the very small adjustments that you can make then you have to try and get the tires to work properly. You’ve got no feedback. You’ve got nothing which is telling you exactly the right range.

“One of the things we have to achieve with the car in the future going forward is a broader sweet spot for the car. I think today we managed to get the car right in those conditions, with the tires and the low fuel, and we’ve got to find ways of translating that into the race. I don’t know yet tomorrow whether we’ll hit that correct period.

“I think we’ve got a better chance because the conditions tomorrow are going to be more consistent that we’ve had for the last couple of days. We’ve had a couple of days of setting the car up. Both Melbourne, with a much hotter race day, and Malaysia, with a much colder race day, presented some challenges. We were not on the top of the job in those two races, and there were changing conditions.”

Adam Cooper notched up his 27th season as a racing journalist in 2011. He has written about F1 for SPEED.com since 2005. Follow him on Twitter.