Revealed: Mercedes disclose full story behind FIA tyre pressure infringement

The Brazilian Grand Prix kicked off with ample pre-race confusion after Aston Martin driver Lance Stroll lost control of his car on the formation lap, beached his machine, and aborted the start of the race. Multiple teams and drivers were soon caught in FIA infringements.

One such team was Mercedes. After the race, representatives from both cars were summoned to the stewards over pre-race tyre pressure infringements that ultimately resulted in a fine. Today, Mercedes has revealed the full story.

Mercedes clarifies Brazil tyre pressure infringement

The Brazilian Grand Prix faced an aborted start after Stroll beached his Aston Martin, and after front-row drivers Lando Norris and George Russell took off for a formation lap that was not cleared by the FIA.

The chaos caused the start of the race at Interlagos to be delayed by roughly a half hour.

During that time period, it came to the attention of FIA Formula 1 technical delegate Jo Bauer that the Nos. 63 and 44 both had tyre pressure adjustments during between the 10 minute and five minute signal pointing to the redone race start.

Bauer noted that tyre pressure was released while the wheels were fitted to the car.

“As this is in contradiction to TD003 N, items 2. c) and 2. h) i., I am referring this matter to the stewards for their consideration,” Bauer wrote in his official referral.

Now, in the team’s post-race debrief, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has talked at length about why the team made the pressure error.

“The issue was when we got the message for the restart, that was straight into a 10 minutes to go,” he began.

“The tyres must be fitted to the car at five minutes to go. That meant that we only had a few minutes to get the tyres down to the car, get them on the car, and get them checked by the FIA.

“That did not fit.

“In Brazil, it is an unusual pit lane layout. The garages are up high. You have got to go down either right round the pit entry road or there is a gate much further up.

“But with the position of our garage, we had to get the tyre set quite a long way to make it to the car.”

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Short on time, Mercedes mechanics hustled to get the tyres to the car, but Shovlin pointed out that there was an “added complication.”

“The set that we called for, which was not a set on the racks, but a set on wheelie boards so we could move them, had not been bled down to race pressures at that point,” he said.

“The engineers will be calling for different tyre pressures. The tyre technicians are then running around trying to make sure all the sets are done. These sets were not done.

“Once we got them down to the car, we were up against that five-minute limit, which is a serious penalty if you do not make that. We had to then get them on the car. We then started to bleed them, but ran out of time.”

However, the real issue was less that the team had bled the tyre pressure, and more that “we did not have time for the FIA checks to be done” on the tyres that ended up on the cars.

“They were happy that the tyres were at the right pressure,” Shovlin said of the FIA.

“It was simply that the scrutineer was not there supervising the bleed before they went on the car. That was why we were then called to the stewards.”

The Mercedes team was fined €5,000 per car, for a total of €10,000.

Per Shovlin, though, the fine was appropriate for what was ultimately a procedural issue.

“They accepted there was no sporting gain from it and that we were complying with all the regulations around tyre pressures,” he said of the FIA.

The penalty “was only given for a procedural issue with a mitigating factor that there was not the time available to get them down there and get the checks done before they had to be fitted.”

A small error, yes — but in Formula 1, adherence to procedure is everything.

Read more: Lewis Hamilton, George Russell fined for FIA investigation over tyre pressure breach