The Trofeo Bandini winner has just had a ride in a century-old Mercedes – but he’s fully focused on future developments, especially when his home race is coming up…
WORDS ROBERT HOLMES PORTRAIT MERCEDES
Congratulations on winning the Trofeo Bandini. What was it like to try the 1924 Targa Florio car?
It was incredible driving the Mercedes from 100 years ago – the car hasn’t been driven for over 80 years. And it’s a car that you expect to see in a museum and never be touched. And to see how well it was driving, it was so loud. It sort of made the hair stand up on my skin. The steering wheel was so big, I couldn’t actually reach the brake pedal. So I was having to use the handbrake on the side of the car, which I hadn’t quite expected to do, but it was a real privilege – and seeing the Mercedes star on the front as well, and the history of that was pretty special.
Toto Wolff has talked about the team now finding improvements through incremental gains rather than looking for ‘miracle cures’. What’s your perspective on the development direction?
I think it’s clear from two years ago that we didn’t start on the right track. And we’ve been changing the track a number of times over these past two seasons, to try and find a path that we’ll be able to build upon. Perhaps we’ve changed a couple of times too many. We’ve been trying to find development slopes that will give us big performance quick. And you know, maybe that just isn’t feasible when you think these guys [other teams] have just been building upon their platform. And they have been doing a really great job.
I think it was obvious we overstepped the changes we made to this car. We’ve gone too far, in the other way, and we just need to reel it back slightly and find that happy medium. But as we’ve said number of times – if it was easy, everybody would be winning, and everybody would be finding lots of performance. We’re competing with so many great teams. And we just need to try and find that step that’s going to bring us into that fight with the guys at the front.
Where is the car better after the update package that was fitted at Imola?
The car is definitely more balanced through the lap now. We were struggling a lot at the start of the year, balancing the high- to low-speed corners. And I think we’ve made progress – when you look at the gap to Red Bull, the gap to the rest of the midfield, we’ve moved forward. But I do think it’s fair to say Ferrari and McLaren have moved
