Poor qualifying disappoints Mercedes

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Mercedes suffered their worst performance in qualifying for the second race in a row.

Tenth and 13th on the grid in Canada two weeks ago had been their worst to date.

But Nico Rosberg and Michael Schumacher will start tomorrow’s Eureopean Grand Prix from 12th and 15th respectively after both failed to reach Q3.

Rosberg said he got the most he could out of the W01:

It’s very frustrating to be so far back on the grid although my lap was good today. There was just no more performance to get out of the car.

We had a few issues this morning so we had to make a compromise on our upgrade package and that made the difference of being in the top ten. It’s not easy to understand what happened as we hoped to take a step forward here but we haven’t got the best of our updates yet and we need to understand the tyres quickly.

The car will be stronger in the race so we stay positive and see what will happen.
Nico Rosberg

Schumacher – who was threatened with elimination in Q1 until he improved his time with his final effort – said he lost time in traffic but didn’t think he could have reached Q3:

Obviously I am disappointed with my position today and it is certainly not where I want to be. I had to fight with two things.

Firstly, as in Canada we have a general problem with the tyres and we can’t get them to work in qualifying. Secondly, I had some difficulties with the brakes and I was locking the front right all the time.

This made things extra difficult and is something we need to understand. However our new updates are definitely an advantage, although this was not evident in the performance. I could have gone maybe three-tenths quicker on my last lap if Buemi had not been in the way but it would still not have been enough for Q3.
Michael Schumacher

Ross Brawn said the team are still struggling to get the most out of the tyres – despite having introduced a new version of the W01 earlier in the year with revised weight distribution to improve how it uses them:

Clearly that was a difficult qualifying session. After Montreal, we thought that we understood our issues with the tyres but they are still proving to be a challenge.

The team and drivers did as well as they could today but we do not have the pace at the moment and we are not making the tyres work well, particularly in qualifying.
Ross Brawn

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    Keith Collantine
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    12 comments on “Poor qualifying disappoints Mercedes”

    1. Well, if Nico is right, at least if they manage to solve those issues (heat, probably?) they might be again able to gain several tenths, putting them right back in front of Williams, as the field is so tight. But then they need something extra to keep up with the Williams EDD development too.

      1. Williams?

        Force India and Mercedes had off days. We’ll wait and see if Williams are now suddenly the team to beat for Mercedes. I do enjoy how people suddenly forget about Force India and then talk about Mercedes being behind Williams though, it’s funny.

        1. Well, his point is fair, at this track, obviously Williams are one of the “teams to beat”. different tracks suit different cars, So I don’t see how Williams effort yesterday wasn’t worth a mention.

          I could argue that you are forgetting about Renault.

    2. Seems the Brawn/Mercedes team need to hire someone who can help develop their understanding of tyres, every time they’re slow they’ve blamed the tyres.

      Alternatively, it could all be a good excuse, blaming the tyres and not the car.

      1. They did have problems with that in the middle of last season as well. And it has been a problem for Honda before. Something structural seems to be wrong somewhere!

    3. they are clearly behind Renault now…

    4. Could it be that they have one driver who is not getting the most out of the car and thus depriving the team of good data? Rosberg is burying him again this week. When will the excuses run out?

      1. Schumi hater alert

    5. Interesting to me was the way Schumi answered questions directly after Qualli. He actually seemed quite relaxed and enjoying himself, even though he took some evasive moves to avoid giving conclusive info on what was wrong.

      Is that good, or bad to see this guy feeling good but not getting the car further than 15th? Rosberg was not too downcast as well, so what are these guys up to?

    6. To be honest I expected this but I am surprise to see Nico failing to move Q2, I think the Mercedes will be under pressure from both Force India & Renault for the 4th place on the championship.

      But we have a good race for today.

      1. I agree, It seems sometimes, that some teams go forwards and some go backwards.

        Williams finally look like they are going forwards, Renault have been since the start of the year. and Red Bull doesn’t actually have a reverse gear. (I am aware that no cars do. except perhaps for….

        Mercedes! who made the mistake of having 7 reverse gears.

    7. If I remember right the boss of Daimler said something along the lines of “Winning in year one is expected, otherwise we will pull the plug” at the start of the year. That changed to “winning is expected in 3 years, otherwise we wil pull the plug” after preseason testing. After this quali performance and the performance at Canada, what is it going to change to this time!

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