Mercedes intend to introduce the next significant upgrade for their W15 at next month’s United States Grand Prix.
The team encountered some difficulties with the last upgrade it introduced for its car at the Belgian Grand Prix two months ago. It opted not to run its latest floor specification at last weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
However the team is pressing on with its upgrade schedule. Following this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, its next new parts will arrive following a four-week gap without any races.
“We’re always trying to bring performance every race,” said Mercedes’ trackside operations director Andrew Shovlin in a video released by the team. “But at the moment our main focus is on bringing a bigger package to Austin, then we get into the final six races of the year and there will be smaller things beyond that but that’s certainly what we’re working for at the moment is a bigger update to the car at the Austin race.
George Russell finished third last weekend while Lewis Hamilton could only manage ninth after starting from the pit lane following a power unit change. Shovlin said the team used that opportunity to test a different set-up configuration on Hamilton’s car.
“Following qualifying, Lewis had struggled with the car [and] George was finding his set-up and his balance to be much better suited to the track at that time,” Shovlin explained. “So Lewis was able to get together with his engineers, with Bono [Peter Bonnington, race engineer], to look at what they might do with the set-up to try and evolve it better for the circuit, to try and help the car turn more easily. So those changes were then built onto the car for the race.
“It wasn’t so much that we were putting new or experimental parts, it was more just the opportunity between qualifying and race that you don’t normally get to make a significant set-up change and then he was able to see how that performed in the long run on Sunday.”
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2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix
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