Five rounds before the end of the championship, Mercedes is second in the Constructors’ Championship, ahead of Ferrari, and if the team can maintain that position it will be some progress on the previous year.
However, this is unlikely to reassure Mercdes technical director James Ellison and his colleagues, as they are only really satisfied with victories, and Brackley is doing everything he can to return to a leading position. However, the team understands that this will not be possible anytime soon. However, the next step in this direction will be taken next weekend: a modernized underbody will appear on W14 cars in Austin.
“Hopefully this will give me a little bit of a boost, which is always good,” Ellison told The Race. – But first of all, this is useful, because it allows us to determine whether we have chosen the right direction of our work. In terms of lap time, the increase will be insignificant. Yes, this is all useful, but we don’t expect to be able to stay ahead of Max Verstappen.”
Getting ahead of the now three-time world champion and his team, who achieved victory in the constructors’ championship ahead of schedule, is a matter of the further future, and this is in an optimistic scenario for the development of events. Meanwhile, the RB19 remains the best car in the championship, and its advantages are particularly evident in fast and medium-speed corners.
Moreover, it can cope equally well with different types of routes that require different ground clearance values. The only event where Verstappen and Red Bull failed to unleash the car’s potential was the Singapore Grand Prix, and that was only due to a wrong approach to chassis tuning.
Mercedes’ problems are much deeper and more serious: at high speeds, the behavior of the rear of the W14 is not very stable.
“Racers can do a good lap and feel like they’re doing the same thing, but the next lap they do worse,” Ellison explains, describing how this manifests. Therefore, Mercedes plans to eventually abandon the solutions embodied in the 2023 chassis, and next season the car will be different.
There is a special reason why it is important to prepare as best as possible for the next championship: in 2026 new technical regulations will come into force and Formula 1 will once again switch to a new generation of cars, the development of which will begin in 2026 to start. forward, but the conditions for this must already be created now.
“It is important to start the new season in good shape,” said the Mercedes technical director. – But we must try to ensure that the results are above average, because we already have to think about 2026, and there is a good chance that the cars in 2025 will be close relatives of the cars in 2024. That is why it is doubly important that our new car is good.
This forces us to work as concentrated as possible, because we want to ensure that the upcoming championships are successful, and at the same time we have the opportunity to prepare normally for 2026. I think we all have a pretty good idea of what our next car should be.
Although we have not made astonishing progress over the course of this championship, unlike McLaren, we have spent the entire season plotting our course and have been able to get a clear idea of what we need to do. And now a very interesting period is starting, because we are already looking forward to next year.”
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
