Mercedes will not use its problematic new tyre, first introduced at Spa, at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend to assess whether it has caused a dip in form since its victory in Belgium, where it had already been shelved after practice.
Mercedes entered the recent 2024 summer break with three wins in four races, including a potential one-two at Spa, deprived only by a weight-related disqualification for George Russell. However, from the following GP onwards, something went wrong.
After the poor performance in Holland, where Mercedes struggled to find its pace in the race after leading in FP2, doubts emerged over the tyres where, despite the limited time available to fully evaluate the choice, Mercedes had chosen to fit the most recent tyres in any case, trusting the data.
Mercedes then completed a back-to-back comparison of the new and old spec on Friday at Monza, although in reality the updated spec was only fitted to Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s car, who crashed after a few minutes in the first free practice session. Despite this, the decision was made to go ahead and fit the new floor for the rest of the weekend. Although Russell put in a strong performance in qualifying, he was unable to keep up with the Ferraris in the race, partly due to the incident at the first corner where he ran wide to avoid colliding with Oscar Piastri.
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Mercedes has decided not to use the Spa track surface in Baku in order to gather a large amount of data on the car’s performance without the latest updates, in order to understand how the car’s behaviour has changed compared to a known base, Motorsport.com has learned.
When asked to comment on what he felt had negatively impacted Mercedes, making it difficult to replicate their pre-Holland performance, Hamilton replied: “There are a lot of question marks about a lot of things.”
“I think we’re just trying to figure it out. It could be a number of things. It could be the track, it could be the upgrades. My gut tells me it could be the upgrades, but it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. But we’ll try this weekend to take a few steps back and see if we can pinpoint the issues.”
“The analysis work is very intense, because it allows the team to better orient itself in the development, not only for this car, but also for next year,” added Hamilton.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
This will allow them to decide how to adapt the floor or other areas of the W15 in the future, or even eliminate it altogether, with the latter scenario still in the background, given that the team is convinced that this is a step forward in terms of adding downforce, as confirmed by the data they see from the track.
When asked by Motorsport.com on Thursday to comment on Hamilton’s comments in Baku that the issues could be linked to the updates, the Briton said: “The changes have not been a substantial improvement in performance and sometimes you have to look at things objectively. We brought a new floor, we dropped in performance and that was the main thing that changed.”
“We knew the update wasn’t going to change the world. It was just another step in the direction we were going. So, going back to the pre-Spa bottom line, if everything is absolutely correct on paper, it’s a small performance delta.”
“We know what that floor offers. We know exactly where the set-up needs to be, and sometimes with a new package it takes a few races to learn and understand. So, maybe that feeling Hamilton was talking about is correct,” Russell added.
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