Like McLaren last year, Mercedes has pulled off a remarkable mid-season turnaround in 2024 to vault itself back into winning contention in Formula 1’s pecking order.
2024 couldn’t have gotten off to a worse start for Mercedes, the team’s talisman Lewis Hamilton announced he was set to depart at the end of the year for Ferrari and Bahrain Grand Prix winner Max Verstappen finished 40 seconds up the road from the Silver Arrows.
Then, Mercedes had to sit back and watch Ferrari and McLaren take to the top step of the Grand Prix podium as it continued fighting with its 2024 creation, the W15.
However, an upgrade package applied to the car ahead of June’s Canadian GP unlocked the performance from the W15 that Mercedes knew was lying dormant within.
That saw George Russell qualify on pole in Montreal, before the Briton took victory at the Austrian Grand Prix, albeit under fortuitous circumstances after Land Norris and Max Verstappen collided ahead of him.
Silverstone was a far more impressive effort by Mercedes, with Russell leading a one-two in qualifying before Lewis Hamilton took a record ninth victory at the historic British GP venue.
Then, Hamilton took another win at Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium after initially rounding out a Mercedes one-two which was dashed when Russell was disqualified for an underweight car, a result of an inspired one-stop tyre strategy.
The remarkable turnaround pulled off by Mercedes has seen it win three of the last four races, a far cry from where it started the season.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin admitted that the team always knew it could get performance from its W15 challenger.
“I think we always thought this car on its day it seemed to be quick, but being able to do that across a whole weekend was a bit of a challenge for us in the early part of the year,” he said.
“It’s now more usable; that’s not one development that’s lots of things that we’ve done to try and get on top of those issues.
“But as I said we were surprised we weren’t quicker at the start.
“We thought we’d made a good car and underneath it was a good car; it just had some problems that we had to get on top of and now we’re seeing the results of that hard work.”
Those results has seen Mercedes make up for lost ground in the Constructors’ Championship battler and the team now sits fourth in the table with 266 points, 79 behind third-placed Ferrari.
Hamilton has the slight majority of Mercedes’ points haul, 150, to sit sixth in the Drivers’ standings and 27 points behind third-placed Charles Leclerc.
With 10 rounds to go in the 2024 campaign, Team Principal Toto Wolff has given Mercedes the target of attaining third place in both championships come the end of the season.
“It is difficult to say what will happen in the final 10 races,” Wolff said.
“The competitive order between the top four is close.
“That is a good thing though as it is making the sport incredibly exciting.
“We will be pushing hard to fight for more victories and aiming to get top three in both championships.”
