Toto Wolff expects that Mercedes will have a further floor upgrade at the US GP in Austin as the team attempts to get to the bottom of its recent struggles.
A new floor was tried in practice at Spa, but then shelved for the race, in which George Russell and Lewis Hamilton were first and second on the road.
The new version was seen again in Zandvoort and Monza, where the team had two difficult weekends.
The old one was then back again for Azerbaijan, and while George Russell finished on the podium, results were inconclusive.
It will be used again this weekend in Singapore, but Wolff say a “new new” version is likely to be seen in Austin, with the three-week break allowing all teams to make and bring fresh parts.
“The track is an outlier,” he said when asked if lessons were learned in Baku. “Nevertheless, it’s not like this was night and day. We still suffered from the same balance performance that we had on the new floor.
“So in Singapore we have the same one. That’s what we shipped over. And we need to race that. But from Austin onwards, we will probably go to a new spec.”
Asked if that was already in preparation or would draw on what was learned in Baku he said: “I think we need to go over the data.
“So you’re going for new, new when the new didn’t work properly, but the old one doesn’t work either. So it’s either old new, or new new. We don’t know yet.”
Wolff admitted that this season’s formbook continues to be impossible to predict.
“You look at the qualifying performances that we had, where we first and second in Silverstone and we were first with Lewis in Spa.
“So there was much more performance in qualifying and in the race. But between those eight cars, it can swing that way, because we’re not talking about tons of time. We’re talking about two or three tenths in either direction, then you have an outlier like Leclerc in Baku or in Monza, where they’ve always been strong.
“So as a matter of fact, this is about who is getting the balance as good as possible, and who is having the tyres in the right window, and what kind of aero concept works well at a given track.
“I will be quite curious to see what happens after Singapore. Ferrari was really strong there last year. So I have no doubt that it’s the third in the row where they can race for the win. Red Bull wasn’t last year. We were doing okay. McLaren was doing okay. So it’s four teams now that are very close.”
Asked about the rest of the season Wolff said: “I think where we’ve traditionally been fast was Barcelona, Silverstone, Spa at times. Austin was a good one for us. Brazil was a good one for us. Not so many good ones left!
“But the pattern in Ferrari is every year the same, whether they are, going for a championship win or not. It’s those five tracks where they are exceptional, and the driver is exceptional.”
