The Mercedes team is on the right track to improve its leaderboard position. While teh start of the season was full of disappointments, the team has finally gained momentum. With the persistent efforts of the technical crew, the Silver Arrows were able to make a strong comeback, winning two races.
However, Formula One is a peculiar place. Thus, the dynamics rapidly change, which is what happened with Mercedes during the Belgian FP sessions. The W15, which was doing a great job until now, had a faltering start to the weekend. Both drivers complained of the car behaving differently. As a result, the technical team made a quick decision to abandon the latest upgrade.
This Is The Reason For Abandoning The New Floor
In an attempt to improve their track record, Mercedes introduced a mega upgrade plan. While other teams made no major tweaks, the German Marque brought five updated components to Belgium. However, all the focus was on the floor update, which was the critical component. The revised floor edge wing was introduced with an additional flap element over the forward section. It was to increase the frontal load. Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin noted that the major purpose of their recent enhancements is to boost downforce. The team’s goal is to improve aerodynamic performance rather than make any substantial modifications to the features. During development, there is inherent uncertainty about the precise consequences since they cannot fully control every component of the modifications, such as ride heights and speed ranges.
However, according to the data, the team was losing 0.9 seconds on the straights compared to the rivals. Thus, it spurred up a debate inside the Mercedes camp, arguing that the new upgrade might be hindering the pace. Thus, during the post-session engineering meeting, they decided to remove the new floor ahead of the Sunday race. Moreover, the wet conditions also helped the team make this decision, as the driver should be fully confident during an accident-prone race. Meanwhile, the team will reevaluate the conditions to change the floor components before the Sunday race.
Lewis Hamilton Points Out The W15 Problem After A P4 Qualification
The Mercedes’s start to the weekend was not as expected. Thus, Lewis Hamilton pointed out that the car was behaving differently compared to the past races. As a result, the Silver Arrows duo was lagging behind the rivals during the practice sessions.
However, after the change was made to the car, it performed considerably well during the Saturday qualification. While RBR’s Max Verstappen clinched the pole, his penalty will push him to the eleventh spot. Thus, Hamilton will start from P3 while Russell will be on P6.