Mercedes have lost ground to the other front-runners since the summer break. With upgrades to the W15 failing to match the improvements made by rivals, the Silver Arrows are working on eliminating their fundamental weaknesses for 2025.
Persistent weakness holds Mercedes back
There are a few themes that have consistently plagued Mercedes over the last few seasons.
Toto Wolff’s team continue to struggle slow-speed corners, which has become a limiting factor for the W15.
Recent upgrades to the W15 are yet to fix this weakness. However, Andrew Shovlin insists this is not a concern.
The head of Mercedes trackside engineering explained the team’s roadmap for future development:
“The issues that we’re struggling with on this update, a lot of those are the same as the ones we were struggling with before.
“Where we tend to be weak is in the slow speed corners,” Shovlin outlined.
“Particularly the ones where you’ve gone one corner following into another.
“There’s a lot of turning in the car and that’s a weakness that we need to work on.”
Bigger changes planned for the W16
Fundamentally, the budget cap forces teams to be selective in the upgrades they introduce throughout the season.
For most teams, especially one with Mercedes’ resources, short-term sacrifices are necessary for long-term gains.
Whilst the team’s trajectory has dipped in the second half of 2024, more drastic solutions should feature on the W16.
Only next season will the biggest changes from the factory in Brackley arrive to the track:
“Now we didn’t expect this update kit to improve that,” Shovlin continued.
“All we expected was to just lift the base performance of the car.
“So in terms of what we’ve seen, yes we’re confident it’s doing what was expected.
“However, we’re also confident there are some fundamentals that we’ve got to get to grips with… in order to fix them on the W16.
“We’re very busy with that right now, and hopefully making the right changes over the winter so we’re not struggling with these weaknesses next year.”
