Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, drops hints about an exciting car update for next year.
Despite struggling to keep up with front-runners since new regulations, they’ve only won one Grand Prix in the past season. Despite their focus on next year’s car, they’ve continued to develop the current one, even adding a new floor in the recent United States race.
Shovlin’s positive comments suggest their recent race performances are showcasing the strength of these fresh improvements.
“If we look at the performance in Austin and Mexico, being able to race cars like McLaren and Ferrari effectively, we’d say that the track data is certainly suggesting that we’ve made a forward step,” said Shovlin.
“Bear in mind that all of the top teams have been bringing upgrades to their cars over the last few races, it is crucial that you can match them on development, even better to be able to continue to fight them on track.”
Shovlin indicated that Mercedes’ new floor in the United States will continue into next year and that he is encouraged by its success thus far.
“The other thing is we collect a lot of data off the car,” he said. “Pressures off the floor, pressures off the wings, loads on the car and all that data is correlating really well with what we’re seeing in the wind tunnel.
“That’s crucial for next year because this floor is actually a step in the development direction that we want to take for 2024.
“So very encouraging signs but a lot of work ahead of us.”
