
Fighting for pole position on Friday afternoon and seeking a comeback from the back on Sunday. Mercedes’ weekend was not one for the books, especially as it came during a weekend where the team had brought many aerodynamic updates, hoping to make a step forward in terms of performance.
However, the United States event did not progress positively but followed the opposite path, with a decline that saw the team fighting only for the third row in qualifying with George Russell, while Lewis Hamilton suffered a shocking elimination in Q1. Also weighing on the weekend was the incident with Russell, who severely damaged the car, forcing the mechanics not only to work on the car overnight to complete repairs and start from the pit lane, but also to revert to the old package as there was no spare kit available.
In the race, the Englishman managed to climb back up to sixth place ahead of Sergio Perez’s Red Bull, thanks in part to a good strategy: starting on the hard tires, as shown by Liam Lawson and Franco Colapinto in the top ten, proved very effective due to the low degradation, allowing damage limitation. However, on the other side, there was a very bitter end for Lewis Hamilton, stranded in the gravel after losing the car in a spin on lap two, at the same spot where George Russell crashed the previous day.
“Finishing sixth ahead of a Red Bull is really fantastic. Of course, you always wonder what could have been, but at the moment, we are dealing with a difficult car,” Russell explained. “Lewis [Hamilton] never makes mistakes, and today he had the exact same situation that happened to me yesterday. This is the beast we are dealing with right now.”
And it is precisely from here that Mercedes’ weekend starts again, from that spin by Hamilton that brought his race to a disappointing end after just a few kilometers. According to the seven-time champion, the package brought to Austin, an evolution of the floor that was rejected at Spa, had reintroduced bouncing, which was also the cause of both incidents over the weekend. Turn 19 is one of the most challenging on the U.S. track because you enter with a lot of speed while trying to fight understeer: when bouncing comes into play, the risk of suddenly losing the car is real.
Looking back over the weekend, from the first free practice sessions, Mercedes was seen to be very difficult to drive over the bumps, especially in the fast sequence of the first sector, where both drivers risked losing the car, with Hamilton even spinning. On that occasion, it was clear how much the car was touching the asphalt and how much it was struggling over the bumps, so the difficulties encountered in that section, already noted during practice, were not surprising.
However, the fundamental issue is that these general driving difficulties are not evident only with the new package; they have been a theme throughout the year. Toto Wolff wanted to emphasize that, unlike what happened at Spa, the initial data did not show a fundamental problem with the new update package, which is why it should also be kept next week in Mexico.
“I don’t think there is a fundamental problem with the update, quite the opposite. My thought is that there is more interaction between aerodynamics and mechanics. So we will continue with the update; it doesn’t make sense not to, because there is a lot of potential that we haven’t yet unlocked. But on the other hand, we need to be very open. George drove the July update in the race because we didn’t have a spare floor, and it seemed quite competitive,” Wolff said at the end of the race.
The main issue, however, is that this Mercedes, even in Austin, once again demonstrated that it has an extremely narrow operating window, a problem it has carried over not only from this year but from previous years as well. When it approaches ideal conditions, the car is able to perform and show good potential, but when it moves outside of that window, the car struggles to be competitive, especially in hot conditions. On Saturday, when the temperatures were quite warm, Russell struggled with thermal degradation of the front-left tire.
This aspect is also linked to another, which is the difficulty for the drivers in extracting the best from the package from a driving standpoint, something that is not only related to individual updates but is part of the DNA of the W15. The Brackley car has often proven to be nervous and unpredictable, making it not only difficult for the drivers to drive it to its full potential but also to understand and grasp its behavior.
Mercedes had hoped that this package could help widen the W15’s window and make it easier and more predictable for the drivers. Certainly, having more time during free practice for specific tests in Mexico could help find a more effective setup window, but Austin remains a weekend where more doubts than certainties emerged: “It is clear that the inconsistency we have had with ground-effect cars for the last two and a half years is a problem we need to solve. But I don’t think we’re far off. I think it’s a step forward in understanding better,” Toto Wolff added, highlighting how development over the past two and a half years has been like a rollercoaster, something Lewis Hamilton has often complained about.
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