PlanetF1

Brawn: Hopefully tyre issues resolved

Friday 06-April-2012 10:40

Ross Brawn believes Mercedes have resolved the tyre issues that plagued them at the start of the season.

Despite showing impressive pace in qualifying and challenging for front row grid slots, Mercedes have just one point to show from the opening two rounds of the Championship.

The team's main problem in turning their qualifying pace into points has been with regards to the Pirelli tyres.

In Australia Mercedes struggled with degradation due to the warmer conditions during the grand prix while in Malaysia cooler temperatures on the Sunday again hampered their efforts.

Brawn, though, is confident his team has established the cause of the problem.

"In Melbourne, we overheated the tyres," said the team boss.

"It was under control on Friday, then we developed the set-up in a direction which did not prove helpful in the warmer conditions.

"In Malaysia, having done a lot of work in practice to make sure we didn't suffer from the same problem, the cooler conditions on Sunday dropped us out of the window again.

"Our analysis since Malaysia has given us an even better understanding, and we have plans and actions in place to improve our tyre management.

"We clearly have a reasonably quick car - we have shown that in qualifying - and now we have to convert our speed into race performance."