As the summer break approached, Mercedes’ mid-season review showed a season of two halves. After starting similarly to the previous two seasons, the summer races brought a significant turnaround, offering the best prospects for the second part of the championship. However, in the stretch that concluded with the Singapore GP, the early issues of the W15 seemed to return, affecting performance and results. During this autumn break, Mercedes has worked hard to ensure that the upcoming upgrades can bring back the competitiveness that has been lacking for a couple of months.
The narrow operating window has been costly in recent races
After the Spa race at the end of July, Mercedes went into the break with a series of races that had given them momentum heading into the second part of the championship. However, since returning to Zandvoort, the W15 seemed to suffer from the same issues that had significantly affected the start of the season. The car’s narrow operating window caused headaches for the engineers, who often observed differing and contrasting results from one session to the next. This was evident in the last two races at Baku and Singapore, where performance fluctuated significantly from one day to the next. In Azerbaijan, the weekend began with high expectations, only to take a turn for the worse in qualifying, where Mercedes struggled. The opposite happened at Marina Bay, where Friday showed how the engineers and drivers were struggling to find balance. Competitiveness returned in qualifying, with Mercedes locking out the second row, but then faded again on Sunday when the race pace was not up to the level of their direct competitors. This inconsistency was also seen at Zandvoort and Monza, where the team finished without definitive conclusions due to the alternating conditions in the Netherlands and the atypical nature of the Monza circuit.
Mercedes has fallen back to being the fourth force on the track!
Such an up-and-down trajectory inevitably reflects poorly on results. Numerically, the comparison with the summer period is stark. Since returning from the break, Mercedes has only claimed one trophy—a third place in Baku for George Russell, which came after the crash between Sergio Perez and Carlos Sainz on the last lap. Just a few weeks earlier, Mercedes had a streak of six consecutive podiums, with three wins in the four races before the summer break. In this scenario, their direct rivals have clearly benefited, seeing a team that was often strong in the summer suddenly falter in the last four races. Since Spielberg, where Mercedes took its first win, they had overtaken Ferrari in terms of track performance, trailing Red Bull by about two-tenths in both qualifying and races but falling behind McLaren. After the break, the Woking team confirmed itself as the technical benchmark, while Mercedes fell back to being the fourth force on the track, significantly widening the gap to McLaren, especially in race pace, and also losing ground to Ferrari, whose latest updates have given the SF-24 a noticeable step forward. In the last four races, Mercedes has averaged a six-tenths-per-lap deficit in race pace—an outcome that was far from expected going into the summer break.
After the last race in Singapore, team leaders focused on explaining these performance struggles. The W15 has once again suffered from a narrow operating window, making it difficult to find the optimal balance for race weekends. Toto Wolff and James Allison also highlighted an additional issue: rear tire overheating, especially on tracks where traction is critical. The floor upgrade introduced at Spa was supposed to help but failed to deliver. The fact that Mercedes engineers struggled to find the right setup was evident in their package choices. In the last two races, the Brackley team scrapped the Spa Spec floor and reverted to the previous version—the one Hamilton used to win at Silverstone. This decision came with the promise of a revised version, which will debut at the next race in Austin. The United States GP will therefore be a crucial moment for Mercedes, as they are placing their hopes on this final season package to regain the confidence that has been missing since the summer break.
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