Mercedes is about to make use of the ultimate System 1 races of the season to achieve additional understanding of its weaknesses, having accepted it should end fourth within the constructors’ standings.
The Silver Arrows displayed a flip in fortunes mid-season and after a winless 2023 picked up three race victories in the course of the summer season.
George Russell capitalised on contact between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris to win in Austria, earlier than Lewis Hamilton took two races in Britain and Belgium, however the workforce has didn’t proceed that kind into the tip of the marketing campaign.
Though Russell initially led early within the moist situations at Interlagos final day trip, he fell to fourth after pitting earlier than the pink flag to increase a run of races with out a podium relationship again to the September’s Azerbaijan GP, when Russell inherited third after Carlos Sainz and Sergio Perez’s late tangle.
With the hole to Crimson Bull in third now 162 factors, and having seen its struggles lie in comparable areas for the reason that daybreak of the ground-effect period, trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin insisted the workforce would now deal with tips on how to get on prime of these points for 2025 and the ultimate yr of the present rule cycle.
“The primary factor when it comes to studying is that the corners that we’re weak in are nonetheless the identical ones,” mentioned Shovlin.
“It’s the interconnected, sluggish corners. That’s usually the place we journey up.
“Going into the weekend, we definitely had sector two in Brazil, which has loads of these corners, on our radar as an space that we would battle.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Picture by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Pictures
“The massive focus in these remaining races for us is studying what we will. We’re able within the championship the place we can not problem in entrance of us. It is extremely unlikely we’re going to see any problem from behind.
“Our focus has very a lot shifted to studying what we have to this yr to use to subsequent yr to be able to get on prime of these points.”
Regardless of its struggles within the rain in the course of the Brazilian weekend, the place Hamilton finished an unhappy 10th, Shovlin pointed to some great benefits of with the ability to run the automobile within the moist as a part of its studying course of forward of the brand new marketing campaign.
PLUS: Is the Hamilton/Mercedes relationship souring just before its emotional ending?
“In Brazil, it was helpful having that moist operating since you need to get a learn on the automobile within the moist,” he added.
“There’s all the time just a few moist quali and race periods over the yr. It was reassuring to see that the tempo in these situations was first rate.
“However we’re going to be all of the remaining tracks to evaluate efficiency and simply verify what we perceive about this automobile and whether or not the modifications we hope to make for subsequent yr are going to enhance these areas.”
On the particular traits that may be reviewed, Shovlin mentioned: “Vegas has loads of straight line and low-speed corners. Qatar is a sooner monitor after which, ending in Abu Dhabi, which is a mixture of every thing, it should give us a very good learn on how we’re performing and who’s the benchmark.
“Typically it’s Crimson Bull, generally McLaren, generally Ferrari, however it should enable us to determine the hole that we have to shut down over these winter months.”
