Mercedes has struggled to perform at the level of rivals of the caliber of Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren, with a W15 lacking in downforce, which still has some gaps in terms of handling.
This means Mercedes is difficult to fine-tune, as well as exploit its full potential, with varying track conditions and temperatures over the first six race weekends causing different types of problems for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell , with their single-seaters entering and exiting the correct window of use too easily.
After teasing a fund update in Miami, the rest of Mercedes’ first real upgrade package of 2024 will be introduced for this weekend’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola. But team principal Wolff warned that it will take “several races” before the full package of upgrades can allow for a change in on-track performance.
“The first six races have not been easy, but we have understood where we need to improve and have mapped out a clear path to address it,” said Wolff. “It will take several races before we see the fruits, but everyone is working hard to get them as soon as possible.”
“In the meantime, we will try to maximize the package we have. We are bringing more updates to Imola and hope they push us in the right direction.”
While the performance issues encountered at circuits such as Jeddah, Melbourne and Suzuka were all different in nature, Mercedes’ head of track engineering, Andrew Shovlin, says he identified underlying trends that gave direction to what needs to be changed.
“I think we have a reasonable idea of where we need to push development now,” Shovlin said. “It’s not like we had the same problem on every track. In Jeddah, we had a lot of bounce at high speeds and the car was very difficult in fast corners and we were not fast enough. But we solved the problem.”
“In Melbourne, then, we had a different problem: the rear tires were degrading too quickly. I think we managed to solve the problem in Suzuka, but you can only solve one at a time.”
“But there is a strand of work that we are doing at the moment, coupled with the fact that we just need to improve performance. In the next races, we have quite a healthy set of updates to be able to make, unlike the last five or six races, where it was a fixed specification.”
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