Andrew Shovlin of Mercedes has provided insights into the recent upgrade package of the team and its actual ramifications. The full effects of the upgrades, Mercedes revealed, won’t be evident until they address the persisting “handling issues” with the W15.
The Miami Grand Prix witnessed another challenging weekend for Mercedes. Both drivers failed to secure any points during the sprint, and on race day, they found themselves as the fourth-fastest team, trailing behind McLaren, Red Bull, and Ferrari.
Despite this, Lewis Hamilton exhibited promising pace, finishing sixth and exerting pressure on Sergio Perez in the latter part of the race.
Mercedes had rolled out a substantial upgrade for the Miami race, focusing particularly on enhancements around the floor area. However, according to Andrew Shovlin, the true impact of these upgrades won’t be fully realized until they address their handling issues with further improvements.
“We managed to pull forward about half of our upgrade kit to Miami, and then the other half will arrive in Imola,” Shovlin elaborated during Mercedes’ debrief on their YouTube channel.
“We’re working very hard on the future races to try and bring developments to them as well. Did it work as expected? Yes it all looks like it’s delivering the performance that we were hoping for from the floor.
“The issue at the moment is everyone else is developing their cars. You saw McLaren with a big package and they looked to have moved forward. Also the handling issues that the drivers are having to battle with are making it hard to see all of that performance as a straight step forward.”
The W15 is characterized by its inconsistency, often displaying varying behavior from one session to another.
Shovlin elucidated why the impact of the upgrades will remain somewhat limited, at least for the time being.
“What we tend to find is the car from session to session can behave quite differently, and until we address this, we’re always going to mitigate the benefits we can derive from these updates,” he remarked.
“But after that last few races we’ve got a very clear idea of what we need to do the car to get it handling a bit more easily for the drivers, making sure it goes where they want it to go when they’re on those important qualifying laps.
“We’ve also got quite a good thread of updates that will be coming for the next three or four races. A lot of hard work going on but hopefully we’ll start to see the fruits of that soon.”
