Why Mercedes must stay grounded

Not many people expected Mercedes to bounce back from their tyre struggles with a win last weekend. The car was fast as always during qualifying, and less hurtful on its rubber. It was a long time coming, for both the team, and Nico Rosberg, who was undoubtedly the happiest person on Sunday afternoon. Nevertheless, it's very early times, and there's quite a few reasons why the German team shouldn't get carried away with their temporary success.

Rosberg on his way to pole position

China offered a mixture of cold and slightly warm conditions for the field. Tyre degradation was less of an issue than in Malaysia, for instance, where even during rainy moments it was warmer than in Shanghai. Obviously as the temperatures rise, the tyres degrade at a faster rate. This heat was no friend to Mercedes. This car seems to warm up its tyres slightly faster than the rest of the cars. It is all down to an aggressive, qualifying-based setup, where downforce is increased, ultimately leading to faster tyre degradation. This setup tends to favor better lap times, but in the long-run, it's a massive disadvantage, since you would like to conserve your tyres as much as possible in the race.

As no setup changes are allowed between the end of qualifying and the race, the configuration that you prepared ahead of qualifying is the one you will be using for the rest of the weekend. This is where Mercedes come into the picture. They claimed that the car was visibly faster in qualifying due to their aggressive setup, and they did not expect that configuration to hurt them to such an extent in the race. Now, while that may be true, the heat did impact their performance, and there's probably more to it than just simple setup balancing.

In China, either Mercedes have decided to indeed balance the quali-race configuration, and the car has improved just that much in the course of three weeks, or they gambled and used the same aggressive setup, as they knew the temperatures were rather cool for the weekend and that would save their tyres. Considering the circumstances, it was probably down to the low temperatures, rather than a miraculous setup optimization, while having a ferocious speed.

Seeing as temperatures are expected to be as high as 31 degrees all throughout the weekend, Mercedes will most likely opt to run a more race-oriented setup to conserve the rubber. That would mean a little less speed in qualifying, and a better performance on Sunday. The field might be closer to them in case they end up in front in the qualifying session, but it's not worth risking it and playing all their cards in qualifying. The points are handed after the race, and that is what Mercedes should be focusing on while staying grounded.