Mercedes has claimed that it was “inconvenient” that the team’s best Formula 1 weekend of 2025 coincided with the reintroduction of a problematic rear suspension.
This weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix has seen Mercedes revert to an older-spec suspension as it attempts to discover the reason behind the team’s recent downturn.
This is the second time that Mercedes has experimented with that area since introducing the part at Imola, having decided to shelve the update in Spain and Monaco.
The revision returned on both cars in Canada as the team logged a double podium last month, though, with George Russell victorious and Andrea Kimi Antonelli third.
But Mercedes hasn’t managed a single podium in the three races to have taken place since then, inspiring Russell to claim that the side has regressed in recent times.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin has hinted that success in Montreal was deceiving when it came to assessing the new suspension’s impact.
“I mean, in a way it’s always been on the radar,” Shovlin told media including Motorsport Week.
“One of the inconvenient facts was that that was on the car in Montreal, where we had a very good weekend.
“Now that circuit is very different to some of the recent ones, but if we looked over the past three tracks, high speed performance hasn’t been where it was.
“The drivers talked about lacking entry stability and then just this general sense that they didn’t have the trust in the car that they did earlier in the weekend.
“Now, with the wet races that we’ve had, perhaps arriving at that conclusion wasn’t as swift as if we’d had a straightforward run of dry races and dry sessions.
“And then on top of that we had other sets of experiments that we were playing with around the time of Montreal and Austria.
“But we were starting to get to a stage where the next logical thing is to wind back on that change and see if we can recover that stability that they are craving.”
Shovlin has explained how some complications at Mercedes’ base in Brackley forced the team to debut the new suspension without a complete data report available.
“We had some issues in some of the laboratory work that we were doing that meant that some of the test results were arriving quite a bit after it had run on track,” he said.
“We certainly had it under the microscope at that point because it then subsequently was off the car in Monaco, was off the car in Barcelona and then we reintroduced for Montreal.
“Now, in a way, that might have been an inconvenient fact that we reintroduced it at our best race weekend of the year.
“We’re still going through data from lab testing to understand what it was. The reality is that if we do prove that that’s a problem, we will learn from the experience.
“It’s always quite difficult making suspension changes to existing components because everything is a compromise.
“But if that is the case, then we’ll learn from it and it will be useful in our knowledge of making the next car.”
Mercedes makes no other changes
Shovlin also divulged that Mercedes’ W16 has remained unchanged bar the suspension change, with no more parts arriving to complement those brought to Belgium.
“Basically that’s the only change and it’s all bits that have been running on the car previously,” he said. “Hopefully we can re-baseline here and see where it stands.”
Meanwhile, the Mercedes stalwart has denied that the Hungaroring’s slower-speed nature could prove a hindrance to the team’s bid to acquire an accurate evaluation.
“I think Montreal is quite unique in that it is only very slow corners, but entry stability will be apparent,” he explained.
“You don’t need a flat-out corner like Copse. We should see it through the speed range here.”
Mercedes hopeful reversion inspires return to form
Antonelli, in particular, has struggled as he hasn’t accrued a point since his maiden podium and experienced a double Q1 elimination at the previous round in Belgium.
Shovlin has conceded the German marque will have to go back to the drawing board should the move back to the launch suspension not reverse the Italian’s fortunes.
“We feel that there is a good chance that this will take the car in a better direction,” Shovlin stated.
“If it doesn’t, we need to look at what else is on the table that may have changed between now and the early races, but honestly that list is quite small by then.
“But as with anything, you use the race weekend very much as a forum to experiment and understand.
“We’re hoping that the conclusion is that this recovers it. If it isn’t, we’ve got more work ahead of us and we’ll have to get stuck into that.”
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