Allison: Mercedes upgrades should fix “underlying balance” issues

Jaden Diaz, Giuliano Duchessa

25 Apr, 2024

Mercedes didn’t impact the season as much as they would have liked. The engineers hoped that the W15 was the result of effective learning after two bad designs. The first races confirmed that drivers and engineers are dealing with a car that is still difficult and uncooperative. Mercedes’ W15 works intermittently, and when it does, it’s not entirely clear why.

Formu1a.uno has learned that the biggest concern is that Mercedes has not solved their lack of rigidity. Frustratingly, this is one of the main deficits of the team’s previous cars. The car generates load only under certain conditions, which are too narrow. This limits the team’s set-up options.

The W15 also features an interesting new rear suspension, which was a step towards a solution to open up more setup compromises. However, from the tests and the first five races, engineers have had to tinker with this platform substantially. In Jeddah, some knowledge was acquired, including the revelation that the W15 is still subject to bouncing. The technicians had to race with very minimal aerodynamic load. In the following races, they adjusted their specifications.

JAMES ALLISON. THERE WILL BE UPDATES ON THE W15 IN MIAMI

In theory, Mercedes’ new floor in Miami would follow this trend. Paradoxically, it shouldn’t be a more complex design but should instead provide more stability – especially in low-speed corners.

“We have suffered terribly from understeer so far with a limited front, especially at slow speed. When this is the case, the front tyres say, ‘No thanks, I don’t want to turn’.

“You are forced to recover on the exit with the accelerator, and this kills the tyres. In China, it was amplified,” reveals the English Technical Director.

Mercedes

Nonetheless, at Brackley, they have not lost the ambition to make a big leap forward. They are also still very transparent about their issues:

“You know, it’s funny. I’ve been doing these post-race reports to the world for many, many years, and it’s obviously a pleasure to talk about these things after having done a great race.

“It’s a little less enjoyable when things aren’t as fun when the car isn’t as good.

“But I think one of the things that I’m proud of about this team is that we’ve consistently come out and talked about how things went – honestly, both for better and for worse…

Toto Wolff’s team is in its third difficult year. It is not a simple task to resume a positive curve with this kind of car, which is not extreme in the upper aerodynamics but extremely sensitive at the bottom. However, McLaren could be a good example for Mercedes on the corrections to be made and on reversing the course.

“This is obviously the challenge we will face in the next races, to try to modify both the set-up of the car and the parts we bring to the car so that they can be improved.

“We have upgrade packages coming for the machine, but also components that we hope will correct the underlying balance that is causing us difficulties.”

Miami naturally has a very different layout, which limits the rear more, with only one free run, two qualifications and the Sprint race scheduled again. Allison makes an interesting point about the approach to follow after the first exploratory attempt in China. He offers some hope for Mercedes:

“We definitely learned over this weekend that if you want to be ambitious, be ambitious in the sprint race and then adjust it for the main race rather than the opposite.

“And we hope to have a car in a better place, that the updates that we will bring to Miami will reward us in qualifying, which is very tight, in which a few cents can make the difference while a couple of tenths would make the whole difference in the world.”