Mercedes will seek to build on their progress in recent races by bringing more upgrades to their W15 at the next two rounds.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have taken a win apiece in the last two races. The pair also locked out the front row of the grid last weekend.
Mercedes have struggled since the current technical regulations were introduced in 2022. Team principal Toto Wolff said their progress began when they finally started to understand why their car was behaving the way it did. “Suddenly, everything that didn’t make sense made sense,” he said.
“There was a moment where, led by James [Allison, technical director], suddenly the data made sense, and the gap [to the others].
“The way we balance the cars and how we bring the developments, that was the main thing. It wasn’t a miracle front wing, it’s more the balance we achieve.”
Having found a productive development direction with their car, Mercedes will bring further upgrades to extract more from it at the coming race.
“We’re finding performance, we’re putting it on the car and it translates into lap time,” said Wolff. “That wasn’t the case for the last two years.
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“There’s more to come in terms of performance. We’re bringing updates to Budapest and Spa. But on the other side we mustn’t get carried away.
“We had a win last week, benefitting from the tangling [between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris] but we had real pace, you could see. George was in the lead and almost under all conditions we were there.”
Wolff admitted that despite their win in Austria, Mercedes did not expect to be as competitive as they were at Silverstone.
“Last weekend we weren’t far off,” he said. “When you look at the gap they had before they crashed, it was nearly two tenths a lap, a bit more, and that is the closest we’ve been for a long time, on a track that we didn’t like so much in the past. That kind of gave us hints that it would be getting much better.
“Honestly we didn’t think it would be Silverstone because there’s barely anything [new] that we put on the car. We were more expecting Budapest and Spa.”
Russell and Hamilton led comfortably while the race was dry, though their rivals were able to close the gap when rain started to fall. At the end of the race, when the track dried again, Hamilton was able to out-run Verstappen to the chequered flag.
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This was despite the fact Mercedes put him on the soft tyres, which Wolff believes was the least competitive compound available at that point. “We did have a medium,” he pointed out. “It was very simple for us: We didn’t believe the hard was the right tyre. In hindsight probably the right order of priority would be medium, hard, soft.”
“But I think our tyre deg was good compared to the McLarens and that secured the victory,” he added.
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2024 British Grand Prix
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