Mercedes Admits Crucial F1 Car Issue Which Rival Teams Have Overcome

Saajan Jogia | Jan 5, 2025

Nov 23, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team driver George Russell of Great Britain (63) drives during the Las Vegas Grand Prix at the Las Vegas Circuit. Mandatory Credit: Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images / Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images

Mercedes has acknowledged that managing the W15 F1 car's rear tire temperatures has been a major challenge throughout the season, even with significant upgrades. Addressing this issue has become a key priority for the team, particularly as rivals like McLaren and Ferrari have excelled in this area.

Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin revealed that Mercedes had to adopt an entirely new approach for the 2024 season on the W15 F1 car with the use of a pushrod rear suspension setup and a conventional side profile.

He explained that the new approach Mercedes adopted in 2024 brought improvements to the car, but rival teams initially gained a performance edge by introducing upgrades earlier. However, Mercedes eventually caught up with the other top teams in the technical race. He said:

"I think the big one is development. And if you look at when we brought our updates compared to our main competitors, we were often bringing our big package a couple of races later.

"But if we brought it earlier, it would be a smaller package. So the fact is, on average, over a season, we've not been quick enough when we deliver an update, we had a few races where we were competitive, the teams were trying to beat them, bring theirs, and they moved back ahead.

"That's definitely the main mechanism. I think the start of the season was poor. The car wasn't well balanced, wasn't working across a range of tracks.

"We got on top of those issues over the first seven or so races. And then I think we've just been in a normal development race over the remainder of the year."

Shovlin revealed one crucial aspect of the W15 that proved disadvantageous to the team, which is its ability to heat the rear tire to a point where it loses performance. The car is unforgiving even to the smallest amount of slip. This is said to be one reason why the W15 didn't suit Lewis Hamilton's driving style. The engineering director added:

"Rear overheating, that's an area where I don't think we are as good as McLaren, Red Bull or Ferrari, and that's probably affected as most recently at tracks like Singapore.

"So we're looking at what we can do to get temperature out of the rear tyres - and any work in that area is twofold: one is can we put less temperature in? And the other one is, can we take more temperature out?

"But that's clearly an area where, on a Sunday, we had a big gap to the front in some of those races. And definitely an area of focus for next year.

"It's very fair to say on those [bumpier] tracks, we do suffer more often. You can do analysis on how high people are running, and I don't think we're wildly different to anyone else, but ride is an area that we've been focusing on with these regulations.

"In general, we've made progress. But the whole thing of development in Formula 1 is fixing problems, and can you fix them quicker than your competitors. And that's how you get to the front."