Mercedes explains why it is struggling in fast corners

Mercedes has given an explanation as to why it was struggling so much in the high-speed corners at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

Throughout the Jeddah weekend, Lewis Hamilton complained that he was suffering from a lack of rear-stability in the W15 through the fast, flowing Sector 1, with the Mercedes visibly slower in the section compared to the Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren cars.

Hamilton is keen to see improvements made to the high-speed corner package, with Team Principal Toto Wolff conceding that the team has a "fundamental issue" with the car in that area.

In contrast, the car was quick on the long straights of Sectors 2 and 3, leading Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin to explain why it would not "pay the price" with its set-up.

"It’s a few things. One of them was that the balance wasn't great," Shovlin explained.

"So in those very fast corners, the walls aren't particularly far away, it is where the driver wants a lot of confidence, and quite often we were snapping to oversteer if they really leant on the tyres.

"You can easily imagine how unsettling that is for the drivers, and it was a factor in qualifying and the race, and in qualifying, we were also suffering with bouncing.

"It was less of a problem in the race, there is more fuel in the car, you're going a bit slower and it seemed to calm down and wasn't such an issue.

"But the big [problem] is that we don't really have enough grip, so that is one of things we are working hard on this week because Melbourne has a similar nature of corners.

"We are doing a lot of work to try and understand why we did not seem to have the grip of some of our close competitors.

"In that sector, [we were losing] around three or four-tenths, but the other thing to consider is that we were actually one of the fastest cars, if not the fastest car in a straight line.

"We were quite light on wing level, and what we could do is slow ourselves down in Sector 2 or 3 and try to recover a bit of that time in Sector 1.

"But ideally we'd like to keep that and work out a way to try and improve Sector 1 by other means than just putting a load more downforce on the car and then paying for the price for it on the straights."