The 2024 F1 season has been quite challenging for Mercedes. Last year, the Brackley team arrived in Bahrain with a car that was far from being competitive performance-wise. Only in the second half of the season did the team start reaping the benefits of the updates introduced throughout the races. In this regard, Andrew Shovlin, the head of trackside engineering for the German team, recently offered an in-depth analysis of the issues that hindered technical development throughout the season.
Shovlin highlighted that the timing and speed in making the right corrections are crucial to gain a performance advantage over rivals. One of the main headaches for the German team last season came from the car’s floor. The W15’s floor couldn’t guarantee proper interaction between the airflow exiting the diffuser and the airflow passing through the beam-wing and rear wing. On multiple occasions during the races, engineers made small aerodynamic corrections. We will remember this.
These moves were difficult to interpret, making the drivers unable to extract the maximum performance from the car. The two cars continued to alternate between excellent performances and disappointing results even in the final part of the year, where a few exceptional results were seen. Mercedes continued to perform well only on tracks where the car’s platform remained stable and in particularly unusual weather conditions, with cold temperatures. According to Andrew Shovlin’s statements, it’s clear that the 2024 F1 car was quite unbalanced from the early races.
F1, Mercedes: issues with developing the W15
The W15 was inflexible and unable to adapt to the varying characteristics of the circuits. This factor allowed rivals to build a significant advantage during the early part of the season. The team was only able to turn things around with the updates introduced at Imola and by taking advantage of the unusual weather conditions in Canada. Another central issue raised by Mercedes’ head of engineering was the slow pace of introducing technical updates. Andrew Shovlin pointed out the entire development phase: from the birth of the idea to the arrival of the new parts on the track.
At the beginning of the season, the car was entirely inconsistent, not allowing technicians to find a coherent direction to follow. Once a potential path was found, the behavior changed in the next race, revealing the need for diametrically opposite developments compared to the previous race. All of this slowed down the design and development phase of new parts. The Englishman also pointed out a declared slowness in the research and development (R&D) phase throughout 2024.
Despite the progress made in the second half of the season, the update pace was insufficient to make a difference against the rivals. This suggests the need to optimize internal processes by improving communication between the design, production, and track departments. The imperfect timing in managing and introducing updates essentially canceled out the advantage Mercedes could have gained over rivals. The goal of an update is linked to a relationship that allows for a technical-performance advantage over competitors by improving one’s own performance.
Teams view updates as a “technical-performance advantage” over rivals, which will diminish over the course of the subsequent races with updates to other cars. Therefore, being late in meeting the planned dates means that this benefit disappears, as other F1 cars have already evolved in the meantime. Additionally, the delayed introduction of an update inherently causes a shift in subsequent development, triggering a negative chain reaction in terms of performance.
F1, Mercedes 2025: changes in technical approach to updates
For 2025, it will be essential to present a competitive and predictable car right from the start in Bahrain. This could significantly help Kimi Antonelli in his performance, as facing his first F1 season, he could otherwise encounter greater difficulties in understanding the car and providing precise feedback to engineers about potential updates. During this winter, Mercedes has paid special attention to the correlation between the data collected in the wind tunnel and the analyses conducted in the CFD at the factory.
The goal was to create a versatile car capable of quickly adapting to circuits with different characteristics, using a more careful approach in the car’s design phase. Moreover, Kimi Antonelli and George Russell are already working on the simulator to better understand the new car and prepare work programs to be executed during testing in Bahrain. Finally, a possible strategy for seasonal updates could involve adopting a more dynamic development cycle. The introduction of smaller but more frequent updates might prove useful.
The idea is to quickly test new solutions and make corrections in “real time.” Considering the various difficulties encountered in 2024, the speed of thinking and implementing changes will be crucial. This way, the performance advantage over rivals will not be lost, and not too much time will be taken away from the development of the 2026 car. This means balancing the development of the 2025 F1 car while potentially sacrificing the upcoming season for the next regulatory era’s project.
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