Mercedes confirms tyres caused Brazilian struggles

Kimi Antonelli was in an excellent position in the early stages of the Brazilian Grand Prix. He took the lead after the start and built a healthy gap. But when the track began to dry, the problems started.

Antonelli changed tyres a lap later than second-placed Lando Norris. He was nevertheless able to retain the lead. Although Mercedes lost time by stopping later, it did not lose the position. That only happened when Antonelli spun at Turn 1.

The car felt so bad to Kimi after switching to slicks that he insisted it had suspension damage. His engineer Peter Bonnington rejected that suggestion, however, maintaining that uneven tyre temperatures were causing the problems.

After the race, the engineers were able to examine both the data and the car and reach a definitive conclusion. “Kimi obviously had had a spin, flat-spotted all four tyres and so his pace was somewhat limited,” Mercedes deputy team principal Bradley Lord said on the team’s social media channels.

“We did really struggle as we went onto that dry soft tyre and then in the final inter-stint as well, with a car that was very, very tricky to drive, very oversteery and in the soft tyre stint in particular, with very low tyre temperatures,” Lord added.

According to the engineers it really was a tyre issue rather than a problem with the car. According to one of the team’s most senior figures, Mercedes was not alone in experiencing such difficulties. At Interlagos, where there are few fast right-hand corners, getting the left-hand tyres up to temperature can be problematic.

Uneven tyre temperatures were said to be the root cause of the problem that sent Antonelli into a spin and cost him the lead. “That meant both of the drivers, and indeed other drivers in the field, actually thought there was something broken with the car. But looking at it, it looked like we were just below the tyre temperature window, sometimes popping into it, but then dropping back out of it in the damp conditions, and that’s what was causing the very strange and unusual car behaviour,” Lord explained.

To the delight of the entire team, Mercedes clinched the Constructors’ Championship in Sunday’s race. Under normal circumstances, however, fourth for George Russell and fifth for Kimi Antonelli would have felt a little disappointing. The W17 qualified second and third and was the fastest car for a substantial part of the race, as Lord himself confirmed.

“It was a really topsy-turvy race. It’s not very often that you spin off on a formation lap and almost make contact with a barrier, that you spin in the pitlane with the other car, that you have several incidents on track as well and nonetheless manage to come home fourth and fifth,” Lord said.

“There were periods of the race in Brazil, the first inter tyre at the start and then during a large part of that dry soft-tyre stint, that we actually were the fastest car on track,” the Mercedes deputy team principal added.