The new parts Mercedes introduced this weekend to improve the cooling of its W10 have made a clear difference, says Valtteri Bottas.
Track temperatures exceeded 50C at the Hockenheimring on Friday. “It was extremely hot,” said Bottas. “I can’t remember having this hot conditions last time.“It makes it more tricky for sure, especially for the cars and tyres, lots of overheating. Especially sector three with the corner combinations. It becomes so sensitive, you slide a bit more, you pick up 10 degrees of extra tyre temperature and you can lose a few tenths like this.”
Mercedes had severe cooling problems at the Austrian Grand Prix. However it has brought an upgrade for its W10 this weekend which Bottas said has made a noticeable difference.
“I think we’ve made progress,” he said. “With the package we had in Austria we would have struggled massively today. But now we could actually complete some good long runs.”
However the weather forecasts indicates the next two days will be much cooler, which Bottas expects will aid the team’s performance.
“It’s going to get a lot better for Saturday [on] Sunday with the temperature,” he said. “So it’s good to see we’ve been able to improve that.
“We tried to do some long runs in practice one as well, it was a bit cooler than in the afternoon,” he added. “So for sure we learned quite a bit from the tyres for the set-up.
“But it’s going to be completely different tomorrow. There could be rain on the way, same on Sunday. So it’s going to be a day that we need to be very reactive, very dynamic with the weather and with the car set-up.”
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