Mercedes Puzzled by High-Speed Corner Struggles at Zandvoort Despite Strong Points Haul

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin described the team’s performance through Zandvoort’s high-speed corners as “rubbish” and admits the squad is searching for answers regarding its inconsistency across stints and between drivers during the Formula 1 Dutch Grand Prix.

Following a promising start to the weekend that saw George Russell claim pole position and victory in the sprint race, Mercedes fell behind McLaren’s Lando Norris, who secured both pole and the grand prix win. Although Mercedes still locked out second and third in qualifying and the race—with Kimi Antonelli outperforming Russell to extend his championship lead to 59 points—the team remains uncertain why its early form failed to translate relative to its primary rivals.

“We’ve got a few things on the performance side to try and dig into,” Shovlin said on Mercedes’ Nu Silver Arrows Radio Show. “We’re going to be getting on with that this week and see what we learn.

“But there were a few corners where we were pretty rubbish, like that combination of Turns 7, 8, and 9. You could see it in the faster-speed curves. And it also gives the tyres on the left-hand side of the car a tough time. And we don’t really understand yet fully what’s causing that.

“We’ve got some ideas, but that’s not a problem that we’ve suffered with so far this year. And there’s plenty of circuits that have got kind of continued corners in one direction.

“We were a bit off the pace in the fastest of those turns. And then our problems kind of grew a bit as we went through. All the other corners look solid.”

James Allison, Mercedes, Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images

Compounding Mercedes’ confusion was the fact that minimal changes were made to the cars between the sprint race and the grand prix, as well as during the race itself. While Shovlin acknowledges an expected degree of pace variation across tyre compounds and stints, the differing points at which each driver struggled left the team unclear on the root cause.

“We didn’t change the car. We obviously had different compounds at different stages. But again, we need to understand a bit,” he said.

“George’s first stint was a bit lacklustre compared to his later ones. And then with Kimi, the first stint was good, and then dropped a bit on the second, dropped a bit more on the third, a bit came back on the third. It wasn’t like we were playing around with electronic settings or up and down on flap angles. And for him, the balance of the car was quite different stint on stint.

“The two drivers, normally they report similar things with a car at the end of the race. Both of them, their perception of the balance, and probably the reality is George had a more understeery car, Kimi had a more oversteery car. If we look at how they were set up, we don’t yet know quite why we got such a big difference.

“So, though, really good to have a strong point-scoring weekend when we weren’t at our best in terms of performance. It was actually good fun, sat on the pitwall and having to make decisions in a hurry. I think the whole team enjoyed that and rose to the occasion. And it was definitely a good result, given where we were.

“But yeah, a bit of head-scratching to do over the next few days.”

As Shovlin noted, Mercedes still collected its second-highest team points tally of the season—46 points, trailing only the 55 secured at the Chinese Grand Prix—though both were sprint weekends offering additional scoring opportunities.

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