Mercedes takes stock of its new floor and still expects developments

The time has come to take stock of the new floor of the W15. Introduced in testing but abandoned for the race at Spa before the break, it was given new chances. As soon as it resumed, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were equipped with them over two weekends, at Zandvoort and more recently at Monza.

If the dynamic before the break was encouraging with three victories in four races, the W15s suffered a slight slowdown in their pace. Thus, Toto wolff and his band saw two victories go to McLaren et Ferrari while the performance of their cars has not been blazing. What to worry about after an almost dream summer?

« Over the last three races we have done a lot of comparisons of the available sets, focusing mainly on the floor., Andrew Shovlin launches, Director of Engineering at Mercedes. We are confident that it generates the downforce we expected. How do we know that? We measure the force it generates on the track on the suspension. We also look at the pressure it generates. This allows us to correlate with what we have seen in the wind tunnel. This allows us to have a fairly precise idea of ​​what it does or does not do.

It is important to note that we did not expect a big gain. This is a small package that we introduced but we are nevertheless confident that it produces this load. (aim). 

The hardest question we have to answer is: Is there something in the handling characteristics that this package could do that we didn't anticipate? It's hard to assess because the car performs differently from track to track. On some it worked very well, on others we suffered a little more with the balance of the car without taking into account the aerodynamic specifics. »

A rebound is expected for Mercedes after two races without having been represented on the podium. While they seem to have got their hands on the operating window of this floor despite its instability depending on the tracks, the Germans still plan to touch up the W15 in the hope of fighting again for the first place.

« Yes, the last two races have not been as good as the ones before them., admits Andrew Shovlin. This may just be normal variation from track to track. That’s what we’ll be focusing on over the next few days as more developments are planned. There’s a lot to consider but we have enough data to analyze and learn everything we can from it.. » Come to Baku (September 13-15) to find out for sure.

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