Mercedes ahead of schedule with W15 exceeding F1 2024 performance targets
Mercedes are back in the mix at the front of the F1 field
Andrew Shovlin has revealed the Mercedes W15 has exceeded expectations in F1 2024 after the team had targeted winning races only towards the end of the season.
After suffering their first winless season in 11 years in 2023, Mercedes followed a new development path under the technical leadership of James Allison in F1 2024.
Mercedes W15 progress assessed at halfway stage of F1 2024
Following a tricky start to the season, the team have emerged as consistent frontrunners since a new front wing was introduced at the Monaco Grand Prix with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell winning three of the last four races between them.
The W15 has also claimed two pole positions, with Russell qualifying fastest of all in Canada and Britain.
Appearing on Mercedes’ post-race Debrief show following the Belgian Grand Prix, trackside engineering director Shovlin lifted the lid on the team’s “brilliant” response to their early season woes.
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And he revealed the team had only hoped to challenge for victories and pole positions at the end of the season, with Mercedes now back to “really enjoying the racing” following their recent upturn in performance.
He said: “The main thing is the progress.
“Where we were in the early races in Bahrain and in Jeddah, it was difficult to look at the car and understand what it was you had to do to make it quick.
“We could see it had certain strengths, but it also had plenty of weaknesses. The team has responded brilliantly to that challenge.
“We know where we want to get to in terms of performance level.
“We knew that we wanted to be winning races and we set ourselves a target of by the end of the season, we wanted to be qualifying on pole and winning races.
“We have now had three wins in the last four races. We have had six podiums on the trot. That has perhaps been more than we had expected at that point.
“We are really enjoying the racing now. We are enjoying the challenge.
“It feels like the team has a bit of momentum behind it and we are hoping that we can carry that into the final bit of the season, continue to develop and hopefully continue to win some races.”
Mercedes finished one-two on the road at Spa last weekend as Russell led Hamilton home, but Russell’s elation turned to heartbreak hours later when he was disqualified after his car was found to be underweight.
That gave Hamilton a record-extending 105th career win, having ended his extended victory drought at his home race at Silverstone weeks earlier.
Mercedes’ unexpectedly strong performance on race day came after the team had removed a number of upgrades – including a new floor – from the W15 following a poor Friday in Belgium.
Shovlin confirmed that Mercedes plan to reintroduce the updates when F1 returns from its summer break at the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort later this month as the team aim to close the gap to the likes of Red Bull and McLaren.
He said: “The reason we reverted the car to the Silverstone spec on Friday night was because we had a good race in Silverstone,” he said in Mercedes’ post-race debrief.
“Spa and Silverstone are not dramatically different circuits in terms of the corner speed range that you are dealing with. We had clearly introduced some problems somewhere.
“We think that was largely due to how we were running the car in Spa, not induced by the updates themselves. That was giving us a bit of bouncing in the high-speed corners, as well as a few issues with the balance. Going to that Silverstone car got it all back to normal.
“We have since had time to look at the data to understand what it was that we did, and we are pretty confident that we will be going for a reintroduction in Zandvoort.”
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