Mercedes With Better Cooling?

Heat is the only weak point of Mercedes this season. Therefore, the team supposedly improved its cooling system before the German Grand Prix.

They are the title sponsor of the German Grand Prix this coming weekend. They are celebrating their 125 years of motorsport history with a special livery on their silver arrows.

Hockenheim is just under a hundred kilometers away from its corporate headquarters in Stuttgart. You can bet, that Mercedes will do everything to score another double victory at their home race with Lewis Hamilton (34) and Valtteri Bottas this coming weekend.

Their track record this season puts them as a strong favorite. The only question mark will be the notoriously unpredictable weather. During the heat race in Austria, Mercedes Achilles heel of the Silver Arrows was revealed. This season’s superior car has cooling problems when the outside temperature is higher than 28 degrees.

Wolff: “The weather forecast foresees high temperatures, which were an extremely difficult challenge for us in Austria. So we have to remain vigilant.”

In Spielberg, Hamilton and Bottas constantly had to throttle their engine power and couldn’t prevent Red Bull Superstar Max Verstappen to stop their winning streak.

At Hockenheim, there could be another heatwave with peak temperatures of +40 degrees according to the weather report.

“Only at higher temperatures does Mercedes show a weakness,” Red Bull chief consultant Helmut Marko commented. “That’s what we hope for at Hockenheim, too.”

But Mercedes is fighting back by bringing a new chassis to the German Grand Prix to finally get their cooling problem under control ABMS and F1 learned.

Background: Mercedes should have passed a crash test with a new chassis that could be used in Hockenheim. This was confirmed to ABMS and F1 Insider by FIA sources.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff at least openly talks about the (previous) vulnerability: “The weather forecast foresees high temperatures, which were already an extreme challenge for us in Austria. That’s why we need to stay alert.

“Hockenheim is like Spielberg a relatively short distance, on which the gaps between the different teams will be smaller. That’s why we remain modest and continue to work hard to achieve the best possible result. “

*This article was first published in German at autobild.de/motorsport.