By sessions
April 2 2012

Little has been mentioned in the Mercedes AMG camp other than the team is working on tire complications.

As I sit down to write this article the TV in the background is playing the United States National anthem. It’s rather strange to see Rubens Barrichello standing at attention preparing for battle in the INDY Car Alabama GP.

Our message board has been a little slow but poster gossip has revolved around on how to improve our race pace. We seem to have all the straight line speed required, but our lack of balance and tire performance seems to be stumping all AMG minds. What we have to do to correct our situation seems it will only be settled when we see the Silver Arrows maintaining a decent pace in race trim.

With nearly a month in between races and minimal words coming from Mercedes leaves one only hoping and guessing what we’ll see in China.

Nico’s post-race comments somewhat verified the tire dilemma. He said “My race was up and down, mostly down.” He continued “after the first red flag he was in P4 and when the race resumed he came into the pits for new intermediates saying the tires felt completely destroyed, but was radioed that the tires looked brand new.”  From then forward he said things only got worse. His last comment, “Hopefully China will be his real beginning of the 2012 season.”

Michael fared slightly better by managing a team point after being unfortunatly spun out by Grosjean. He showed good race craft coming back through the field into the final point paying position.

As we go into the 56 lap, 5.451 km Shanghai International GP we can only hope all the head scratching comes up some concrete positive results.

By the way, Rubens finished in 8^th.