Mercedes are set to introduce their first major upgrade package in several races, which it hopes will provide a boost for the end of the season.
It’s believed they will test the package, which includes a Lotus style DDRS and a McLaren style exhaust, at the Magny-Cours Young Driver Test this week.
The team has lacked development recently, which team principal Ross Brawn explained was intentional as they battled with the high tyre wear.
“We weren’t understanding the tyres and concluded that the most effective thing we could do, rather than go straight to a Coanda-system [the exhaust system used by McLaren and others], was to understand the tyres, to get them a bit more under control,” he told Autosport.
“Perhaps we should have done both in parallel but we concentrated on what we thought was the most important thing.”
Now the team is on top of their tyre woes, Brawn says it’s time to work on the cars pace.
“We’re much better at managing the tyres and we’ve actually had races where we’ve made our tyres last better than some of our competitors, which was not the case at the beginning of the year.
“We have also done work in the wind tunnel which, with our new 60 per cent model, has helped us understand more about that type of exhaust system. That’s what we’ll be evaluating this week.”
