The wing of discord
The discussion onMercedes front wing and on his problems in the closing phasewhich emerged in China and dismissed as “calculation error“by the FIA, but without sanctioning measures being taken against the silver arrows. At the end of the FP2 of the Japanese GP, the deputy team principal of the Anglo-German team returned to the issue, Bradley Lord. Toto Wolff’s ‘second’ explained that the team used part of today’s two sessions to try to resolve the problems that emerged in China, apparently succeeding in their aim.
“We’ve been working on some reliability issues, trying to get the front wing to work as it should and we focused on that – explained Lord to the microphones of the official F1 channel – today the wing seemed to behave as it should, without problems. We can therefore continue to work on this aspect and continue to improve over the course of the weekend“.
We are all close
Regarding the outcome of today’s two sessions, with Oscar Piastri’s McLaren recording the best time in FP2, the Mercedes deputy team principal underlined how – in his opinion – the balance on the track is increasingly greater between Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari: “We had a solid session and ran through the program, but we’re all very close. Oscar is first in the timesheets and Ferrari is also under attack. It all seems much closer than it did in China two weeks ago“.
“Russell and Antonelli close in terms of performance? I expect to see this all season long – Lord commented – they exchange best times constantly and in any case they work very well together on the setup and on our weaknesses. We always knew that we would all be close (with Ferrari and McLaren) and we had already said it before the first two races. Obviously we were pleased to be ahead in these races, but we know that there is enormous margin for development and that the order of forces on the field can change from race to race“.
