Mercedes has been working on solving one particular problem with its 2024 car that it believes has held it back in comparison to its rivals this so far this season.
The German squad have concluded that the W15 is highly-competitive in races where the weather is mild and the track temperature is thus lower, but struggles in warmer conditions.
The team’s Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew, Shovlin, believes that he and the team in Brackley have located this as a reason for the problem.
Pinpointed to extra temperature being gathered in the W15’s tyres, which will cause the disadvantage when the weather is hotter, Shovlin is aware that it is now a case of experimenting with different ways of trying to rectify it.
“That’s all down to the fact that we seem to be putting more temperature in the tyres than the others,” he said.
Shovlin knows that whilst it is a positive to have
“We know we need to work on that area. We’ve got plans to do that, but that’s not the sort of problem you can fix with a single aero update.
“It will be the result of quite a few developments to try and get on top of it.”
Shovlin has dispelled any notions that lesser downforce is contributing towards the problem, and used the successful result at Silverstone – in which Lewis Hamilton won – as an example.
“If you looked at Silverstone, in terms of how much downforce our car has got, it can’t be very different to the McLaren or the Red Bull because otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to gently pull away in the first stint, so we don’t think that is the root cause of the issue.
“If you look at where people are running their cars now, they’re all converging on a pretty narrow window in terms of what drag level you target, and inherently what downforce you get from that. So I think we’re there or thereabouts in that regard.
“Obviously that’s one of the key areas of development that will continue to keep giving. But it is an issue of just rear tyre temperature, and that’s where a lot of our focus is.”
With teams being effectively barred from making any technical changes for around half of the summer break, Mercedes will not have had a lot of time to make alterations which it thinks will remedy the problem, but with early weather forecasts for Zandvoort next weekend predicting changeable conditions at a moderate 20 degrees, the original may be able to make a decent attempt at victory.
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