Mercedes spotlight 'issue' awaiting leading F1 teams in Baku

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin believes the already "difficult" task of determining a performance pecking order for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix is exacerbated this year.

The 50-year-old highlighted that given how competitive F1 currently is between the top four teams, it will be "very hard to predict" qualifying order and establish race pace.

Mercedes finds itself in the front quartet alongside McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull.

The Briton anticipates the Woking-based squad will be on form, as it has been across a range of circuit profiles in recent rounds, but is also not counting out the reigning constructors' champions, despite its torrid time at Monza.

"Baku’s always been a really difficult circuit to guess where you’re going to fall in the order," Shovlin explained.

"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, that makes it very hard to predict where their 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 performance and you’d never ever discount Red Bull."

The 'challenge' of Baku

Baku presents a unique challenge for the teams, with the entire low-speed corner profile being offset by the long straight in the final sector.

"It is challenging but Baku is an unusual circuit because you’ve got this really tight, twisty, very low speed sector two, and then this really long straight," said Shovlin.

"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.

"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."

Mercedes headed into the summer break riding a wave of optimism on the back of two wins on merit in the three rounds prior to the mid-season shutdown.

However, since F1 returned at the Dutch Grand Prix in late August, the Brackley-based squad has struggled to replicate its recently rekindled race-winning form.

Shovlin pointed out the level of dissatisfaction from within the team over the results in Zandvoort and Monza.

"We haven’t been pleased with our last couple of weekends, we’re aiming higher than that," he added.

"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 and 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."