One reason Merc was losing in qualy was due to high track temps that caught them out Merc this time coz basically RB16B has a wider tyre window operation when it comes to the softer range of the tyres, especially C4 soft tyre, as we could easily see that in Bahrain, Azerbaijan, France, Austria and Nederlands ...
The second reason is the fact that Merc was concentrating their car setup on the medium tyre which will be the race tyre, the one they`ll start and most important they`ll use at least 2 times in the race, as James Allison was hinting at Sky, for COTA being a high wear track ...
A bit of an unknown quantity about C2 hard tyre, although they seem to perform better at the harder range of the tyres, nevertheless it`s nice to see that they have at least 2 tenths in their pocket on the medium ones, of course after FP2 sim race analysis
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And last but not least, it`ll be interesting to see had BOT will do a longer first stint in order to block VER with the ease of his superior top speed ...