The Silver Arrows are coming off a tough streak of four races, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell never in contention for victory. On one hand, doubts remain within Mercedes about the effectiveness of the new floor introduced in Spa, while on the other, the street circuits of Baku and Singapore highlighted a chronic limitation of the W15. An important update package will arrive in Austin, but a better setup philosophy for certain tracks will also be required.
New developments ahead
“We have a significant package for the car’s aerodynamic setup arriving in Austin, and we hope it allows us to have a good weekend,” announced Mercedes Technical Director James Allison, indicating that the Brackley team intends to use the break month to finalize the updates in progress. However, in Texas, the British team must prove it has moved past concerns about recent developments.
The latest floor brought to Belgium was repeatedly compared to the previous specification, with the team unsure whether it influenced the handling of the W15 single-seater. “This package is subtly affecting the drivability characteristics, and we didn’t anticipate that?” commented Andrew Shovlin, head of track engineers, after the Monza weekend. “It’s quite difficult to verify because the car behaves differently from track to track. It performed very well on some circuits, while on others we struggled with balance, regardless of the aerodynamic package.” The Austin package will give Mercedes the opportunity to assess whether their development guidelines are compromising the car’s drivability.
Challenges in Singapore
Work in the factory over the next few weeks will also focus on the chronic overheating of the rear tires, a problem that emerged fully on a track like Singapore, known for its low-speed restarts that are particularly taxing on the rear end. James Allison explains: “Once again, we suffered from something that has been problematic for us: with the softer compounds and on tracks where tire temperatures soar and it’s very easy to overheat them, we lose competitiveness compared to our rivals. Singapore is extreme in this regard and was something quite difficult for us to manage.” – he pointed out.
The positive news is that the last Grand Prix in Singapore fully exposed the problem, allowing Mercedes to use the break month to study countermeasures with the setup. The Technical Director concludes: “We will try to understand how to mitigate what afflicted us this weekend and how to make the tires work better on these types of circuits prone to overheating. In addition to this, we will have a lot of work to do to complete our final update package of the season.”
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