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The Silver Arrows brought some upgrades to Miami and will bring more to Imola. But will they help?
A major storyline in the Formula 1 world with more than a week until the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix?
The sport’s never-ending battle of upgrades.
McLaren brought a number of upgrades to the Miami Grand Prix, and those helped power Lando Norris to his maiden F1 victory with a stunning Sunday drive. Now all eyes are on Ferrari, as the Scuderia will spend Thursday and Friday giving their own upgrades to the SF-24 a shakedown session at their test track in Fiorano.
Not to be outdone? Mercedes. The Silver Arrows brought some upgrades of their own to Miami, including some new details to the floor of the W15 — more on that in a moment — and expect to complete their series of upgrades in Imola. In their post-Miami debrief Andrew Shovlin, the team’s trackside engineering director, outlined what they learned in Miami, and what they hope to unlock in Italy.
“We managed to pull forward about half of our update kit to Miami and the other half is going to arrive in Imola. We’re working very hard on the future races to try and bring developments to them as well,” described Shovlin. “Did it work as expected? Yes, it all looks like it’s delivering the performance that we were hoping for from the floor.”
Regarding the upgrades the team brought to Miami, Mercedes listed four upgrades on their submission to the FIA, including upgrades to the floor body, the cooling louvres, the front wing, and the front suspension. Perhaps the most striking was the change to the floor body, which the team described as “[c]hanges to floor roof volume and floor edge detail (more vanes added to the floor edge wing).”
While under FIA rules I cannot share the photographs I took of those changes on pit lane from Miami, the legendary Albert Fabrega has you covered here:
According to the team, this upgrade “ … changes increase local floor load and also improve flow to the rear of the car and diffuser. Floor edge changes drop the pressure locally, in turn increasing [forward] floor load.”
Shovlin noted in the debriefing session that both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton still find the W15 unpredictable from session-to-session, and sometimes even lap-to-lap.
“And also, the handling issues that the drivers are having to battle with are making it hard to really see all that performance as a straight step forward,” described Shovlin. “What we tend to find is that the car can behave quite differently from session to session and, until we get on top of that, we’re always going to blunt the benefit that we can get on top of that we’re always going to blunt the benefit that we can get from these type of updates.
“But after the last few races, we’ve now got a very clear idea of what we need to do to the car to get it handling a bit more easily for the drivers, making sure it goes where they want it to go when they’re on those important qualifying laps.”
Speaking in Miami after qualifying on Saturday Russell outlined for the media, including SB Nation, the difficulties they face getting the W15 into the optimal operating window.
“The problems you know Lewis and I faced last year was with this sort of spiteful rear end, and now suddenly we are struggling to turn the car at its low speed corners, and it’s the front [end] That’s that’s sort of washing out,” described Russell. “So I think we’ve just gone too far in in the other direction, and we need to kind of find a halfway house from what we had last year and where we ended up right now.”
Russell then admitted that change will not come overnight, and unfortunately for Mercedes, the clock is ticking.
“But I think you know the the reality of that one,” continued the driver. “When you bring an upgrade to the car, it’s got to be, you know, physically drawn out, put in the wind tunnel, manufactured, and then brought to the car. So it’s not like something can be created overnight and here tomorrow, you know, you’re probably looking at it for a couple of weeks and, a couple of races time, potentially.”
For his part, Hamilton described driving the W15 as living on a “knife’s edge”
Then there is this fact, as described by Shovlin this week.
It is not like the rest of the field is standing still
“The issue at the moment is everyone else is developing their cars,” noted Shovlin. “You saw McLaren with a big package and they look to have moved forward.”
Can Mercedes follow suit in Imola?
