Mercedes Director Pinpoints W15 Flaws As Team Challenges Red Bull And McLaren

Saajan Jogia | Aug 10, 2024

May 3, 2024; Miami Gardens, Florida, USA; Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton (44) races into turn three during F1 practice at Miami International Autodrome. Mandatory Credit: John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports / John David Mercer-USA TODAY Sports

Despite recent improvements in the W15's performance, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin acknowledged that the car still has flaws that prevent it from matching the speed of McLaren or Red Bull's title contenders. However, Shovlin has plans to address these issues and is focused on strategies to surpass its top competitors.

This year's Canadian Grand Prix marked a turning point for Mercedes, where George Russell secured a podium finish in P3. Since then, either he or his teammate Lewis Hamilton has remained in the top three positions in all of the races, which includes two victories secured by the seven-time world champion at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps.

Mercedes' resurgence, along with McLaren's and Ferrari's recent displays of strength, suggests a tightening grid. However, to compete with the fastest cars—McLaren's MCL38 and Red Bull's RB20—Mercedes still needs to refine some rough edges in their car's performance to become a genuine title contender.

Due to early-season challenges that often left the Brackley team's drivers in the midfield, Mercedes currently sits in P4 in the Constructors' Championship with 266 points, trailing Ferrari by 79 points. Despite these setbacks, Shovlin expressed confidence, stating that the team knows what it takes to outpace the fastest cars on the grid, and it's only a matter of time before they achieve that goal. Speaking on Mercedes AMG's Tech Talk interview, Shovlin explained the problems Mercedes overcame:

"What we have seen since then is a pretty impressive delivery of updates to every single track.

"As you solve problems with the handling of the car, the challenge actually becomes simple and you get more clarity about what you want to do next.

"In the early part of the year we had a car that its behavior would be changed wildly with relatively small swings in track condition. In Jeddah we were bouncing badly in the high-speed corners.

"It's quite hard to unpick all those issues.

"If you look at tracks like Budapest, you'd say we're still putting too much temperature in the rear tires and there's also just an element that we need to find a bit more base performance.

"The problems we're dealing with as the car has gotten quicker have also become more easy to see."

Shovlin added that despite the shortcomings, the car was able to close the gap in front, a sign that the development path taken was working. What remains is to materialize ideas that can enhance the W15's performance. He said:

"The remaining weaknesses in hot conditions are the rear-limited circuits.

"We're not as good as the McLarens or Max [Verstappen].

"We saw that in Budapest, and we saw that in Austria. Our gap on race pace in Budapest was smaller so we made progress there over the sequence of these recent races. If you looked at Silverstone, we were competitive.

"Everyone is trying to develop their cars. If you're not developing, at a faster rate than the others then you are going backwards.

"We can only see a month or six weeks into the future because that's the horizon we're working with in the wind tunnel.

"Are they going to continue to be able to bring performance into the latter part of the year? Hopefully. We've got good ideas but there's a lot of work to go through between having an idea and actually getting physical parts that you can put on the car and make it go quicker."