F1 | Mercedes: the new fund returns to Holland, but watch out for bouncing

In the Ardennes came a victory that on Friday seemed almost unexpected for Mercedes, given the balance difficulties encountered at the end of the two free practices. In Spa, the Star had in fact shown up with technical updates aimed at continuing that development path in an attempt to also increase the aerodynamic load of the car.

However, by the end of the first day of free practice it was clear that something in the car’s chemistry had somehow broken, leaving the team confused as to what was causing the lack of pace that had also brought it behind Mercedes.

There were two main elements behind the difficulties of the W15: the lack of speed and, above all, the balance problems that had pushed the drivers to try and experiment with different setups with the aim of finding more confidence in the car. The one who was in greatest difficulty was Hamilton, who had even tried a wing much more loaded than the “basic” one to find a lost feeling: however, if that specific one guaranteed some benefits in the curves, these were not enough to compensate for the time lost on the straights.

Confidence issues in the car that were also caused by the bouncing found in the first two free practice sessions in a similar way to what happened at the beginning of the season. A phenomenon that, clearly, occurred in particular in the faster corners, but that also created problems in those corners where you need to rely heavily on the general stability of the car when entering.

For this reason, after having analyzed all the data from Friday, the team finally took a step back, returning to the configuration that it had already used at Silverstone, a track that, in terms of the range of corners, is not too dissimilar to that of Spa, although the Belgian track tends to require a lower load given the long straights. A choice also due to the fact that, realistically, rain would have arrived on Saturday and this would not have allowed them to verify the changes to the set-up in view of the race that was supposed to be held in the dry. In fact, Mercedes would have gone into the dark with several doubts still remaining.

“The reason we went back to the Silverstone spec on Friday night was because we had a good race at Silverstone. Spa and Silverstone are not that far apart in terms of characteristics, such as cornering speed range. On Friday we noticed that we had introduced some issues,” explained Andrew Shovlin, Head of Trackside Engineering.

Shovlin explained that, from his point of view, the problems were mainly linked to the way the team had set up the car for Spa rather than the updates themselves, especially on a mechanical level, but it is clear that the two things often go hand in hand.

“We think it’s largely down to the way we set up the car for Spa, not the updates themselves. But that did cause a bit of bouncing in the high-speed corners, issues with the balance. Going back to the car we used at Silverstone brought everything back to normal.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

By removing the unknown of updates and returning to a known and more reliable base, the W15 has regained competitiveness: perhaps in a “normal” race, with the reference cars further ahead and the track position factor not so decisive, the leap forward made between Friday and Saturday would not have been enough to beat McLaren and Red Bull. However, once again Mercedes managed to put itself in the perfect position to exploit the problems of its opponents, beating a Ferrari that was almost taken by surprise.

In the days following Spa, Mercedes had the opportunity to calmly analyze the data and understand what went wrong, with the idea of ​​dusting off the package that was momentarily rejected at Spa in the next round at Zandvoort, perhaps with a setup more suited to extracting its potential. A theme that will then be interesting to see in Holland, because the Zandvoort track is extremely particular in its nature, given the sections with high banking but also the high-speed corners where it is not difficult to come across the phenomenon of bottoming given the many bumps in the asphalt, but also with unwanted rebounds.

While it is true that the nature of the Dutch track is made up of both slow corners and faster sections, in the high-speed areas it is essential to give the drivers a car that guarantees confidence in those behind the wheel, given the support corners where you have to find the perfect insertion to set the time.

“The intention is to use the new fund in Holland. We have had time to look at the data, to understand what happened, why we had those Spa problems and now we are confident that we will return to using it,” Shovlin added.