Mercedes is engaged in a long and tiring chase to get closer to the top positions. Since the introduction of ground effect cars the Brackley team has always been (at least) one step behind their rivals. Red Bull and Ferrari first, then Aston Martin at the beginning of 2023 and finally McLaren which is now constantly ahead of the cars of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. Within Toto Wolff’s team there have been several changes and after many difficulties, as repeated several times by the Team Principal himself, the direction taken seems to finally be the right one. This also derives from some important decisions taken by the technicians directed by James Allison, such as the step back made on the front wing, so as to be able to improve the balance of the W15 and start taking small but constant steps forward, trying to reach the competition.
The new front wing corrects the balance problems that emerged with the innovative design of the ‘Launch Spec’.
At the debut of the 2024 single-seaters, one of the single-seaters that caused the most sensation was the W15 designed by James Allison and his team. A creature that Toto Wolff was proud of aggressive design and many innovations which he took to the track, but which proved to be a headache right from the first laps for those who should have known it best, namely the Mercedes engineers. A new rear suspension shared with Aston Martin, an adjustable front suspension and above all a front wing that alarmed rival teams, who immediately asked the FIA for information on its possible regularity. However, as often happens in Formula 1, As the results didn’t arrive, we soon stopped talking about this particular designuntil in Monaco, Mercedes itself renounced this extreme concept, presenting a more conventional front wing. “That drawing is part of the past” said technical director, James Allison “It allowed us to provide discontinuity in a wing that the rules required to be relatively continuous. This design allowed us to bring more air downstream of the front wing, but When we rebalanced the car, we found ourselves with more front load than we needed“
It appears between the two wings used in Monaco by Mercedes – Illustration by Rosario Giuliana
We had the opportunity to talk about how the front wing was one of the problems of the W15 with a lack of correlation between the tunnel and the track, with load values higher than those that came out of the simulator data. This required an important job of balancing the carand ultimately led the engineers of the Anglo-German team to distance themselves from the concept launched by themselves. “This wing is simply better than the previous one. Over time you find better solutions and what you thought was fantastic, in the end is no longer fantastic.”. One of the problems that most afflicted Mercedes was the appearance of chronic understeer, often at low speeds, as Lewis Hamilton complained several times “You can work on removing understeer at low speeds or oversteer at high speeds with mechanical modifications, but this will make the car more difficult for the drivera, The objective is to remove this aerodynamic problem and have less extreme mechanics and a more coherent and predictable car”
Allison: “The more load it produces, the harder the car is to drive. Red Bull took a step back, we took one step forward.”
The trust that Toto Wolff spoke about recently also shines through in the words of James Allison. Lewis Hamilton recently revealed how the English technical director was confident in the innovations that were arriving on the W15 which, by his own admission, will have the task of correcting the balance of the single-seater. The new front wing is a first part of these solutions and has allowed the team to take a small step forward. Here in Canada the seven-time world champion will also have it at his disposal. “These cars and especially these very large wings like to stay very close to the ground. But the closer they get to the ground, the more nervous the car becomes because the balance moves forward more than desired” explains James Allison. The trend since 2022 has in fact been to see front wings increasingly closer to the ground, which has led to an increasingly nervous behavior of the single-seaters, as explained by the English coach.
Going into more detail, Allison explained that Mercedes struggled to find the right balance of the car, especially across a wide range of corner speeds. In fact, the problem sometimes occurred at high speeds, other times at low speeds. As analyzed several times, in fact, the W15 has a rather short setup window and when you need to find a balance between low-medium-high speed, problems arise at Mercedes. A situation that is improving, however “Now we are better than two races ago, and we hope in two races to be better than today” said the English coach. Also speaking a little about his opponents, the Mercedes technical director indulged in an analysis of Red Bull “I think Red Bull will be strong again when you need to bring a lot of corner speed, but their updates so far seem to have been a downgrade. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and continue to work to improve.”
