Brawn Warns Against Increased Expectations

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Mercedes boss Ross Brawn has warned against increased expectation of a Lewis Hamilton title push despite the Briton’s recent victory in Hungary.

Mercedes were able to celebrate after appearing to have found a cure for their tyre problems in the heat at the Hungaroring last week as Hamilton finally scored his first victory in 10 attempts for the team.

Until then, Mercedes were know to suffer high degradation on their tyres in high temperatures but Brawn is reluctant to read too much into Hamilton’s against-the-odds triumph.

There have even been claims Mercedes and Hamilton could now be a real threat to Red Bull and Sebastian Vettel for this year’s titles after Pirelli’s switch to a different tyre in Hungary – in the wake of the blowouts seen at the British Grand Prix.

Yet a wary Brawn told The Daily Mail: ‘It is a strong moving target. We’ve had three specs of tyre this year – what we began the season with, what we took to the Nurburgring (for the German Grand Prix) and what we had in Hungary. So you have to keep track and there’s no doubt that it will suit people more than others. Quite frankly, I still don’t have any idea whether this tyre is the one that suits us more or less than anyone else. It’s certainly changed the order a little because some teams who were doing exceptionally well, like Force India, struggled with it. I’m sure they will come to terms with it but it clearly behaves differently. We’d just started to understand the original tyre at Silverstone when we had to change it again. There are slopes that people will be running along in terms of their understanding of the tyre. We got it on the button in Hungary, but it doesn’t mean we’ll get it right at Spa (Belgian Grand Prix on August 25) because every situation is different. You just build up your understanding of it to use it properly.’

Another crucial ingredient of Hamilton’s success in Hungary was a new cooling system developed by Mercedes to cope with the extreme heat they knew in advance would dominate the weekend.

‘One of the great things the team did was to handle the whole cooling situation because we suspected it would be a hot race,’ added Brawn. We’ve been a touch marginal – more than we should have been – in a couple of races this year, so we introduced a new cooling package for Hungary and again, it was right on the button.’

Image via AutoEvolution

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