Mercedes highlight two Baku issues with rival team ‘never to discount’ identified

Mercedes has been on the upswing in this latter part of the 2024 Formula 1 season, but next weekend introduces a unique challenge: the Baku street circuit.

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ director of trackside engineering, has pinpointed a few challenges for Mercedes coming into the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend — as well as how the competition might fare on the complex street track.

Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin: Baku is “hard to predict”

Since it was first introduced in 2017, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix has come equipped with plenty of surprises — and those surprises tend to make it more challenging to predict than other events. But with the number of surprises cropping up in 2024, anything could happen.

When it comes to making predictions, Mercedes’ director of trackside engineering, Andrew Shovlin, is approaching with caution.

“Baku’s always been a really difficult circuit to guess where you’re going to fall in the order,” he said in Mercedes’ post-Italian Grand Prix debrief.

“Baku is an unusual circuit because you’ve got this really tight, twisty, very low speed sector two, and then this really long straight,” he continued.

“It requires a relatively low wing level; that isn’t what you’d normally have with all those low-speed corners, but you’ve got to have it with the long straight.”

But part of what makes the weekend so unpredictable is the chaos — something that Shovlin also noted.

“It’s also a weekend where you can get a lot of incidents affecting the race, it’s very easy if a driver makes a mistake there that will have to bring out a safety car in order to clear it up.”

Making everything more challenging in 2024, though, is the fact that multiple teams have been competing for victories.

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Shovlin didn’t shy away from acknowledging that the scope of the 2024 season has been challenging.

“The other issue you’ve got this year is any given track you can end up with at least three if not four teams all within a tenth or two of each other,” he said.

“That makes it very hard to predict where they’re all going to fall in qualifying, and where people will stack out in race pace.

“We would expect McLaren to be quick, we’ve also seen Ferrari recently put in some strong performances, and you’d never ever discount Red Bull.”

Of course, Shovlin also touched on the expectations he has for the Mercedes team, noting that Mercedes is “aiming higher” than it has been in the past, since it has become clear that the team is capable of competing for wins this year but that the team has struggled to maintain the pace it’s shown in a handful of races this year.

“We were hoping to start this final part of the season in the same manner that we finished, with a few race wins and some strong qualifying,” he said.

“All of our effort is going into trying to get the maximum performance and trying to get back to weekends where we can come back pleased with the job we’ve done, hopefully come back with some trophies.”

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