Of the top four teams, Mercedes is the only one that hasn’t rolled out a significant upgrade during the European summer races.
The FIA upgrade documents outline the aerodynamic changes declared by each team at every race weekend, but it’s worth remembering that this list only refers to visible changes on the aerodynamic front; mechanical refinements, software tweaks, and weight shedding aren’t areas requiring declarations.
The documents also don’t necessarily mean large changes in the aerodynamic concept of a car, given that many line items on the lists can refer to circuit-specific changes made for the purposes of localised drag reduction or downforce improvement, but what the upgrades list can do is offer an insight into just how aggressive a team is being when it comes to upgrading its car.
Of the four top teams, Mercedes has introduced the fewest upgrades, but remains the car with perhaps the greatest versatility in competitiveness as Kimi Antonelli has continued to rack up victories at a variety of circuit types, despite McLaren’s clear step forward in performance on the MCL40.
Since the Miami Grand Prix at the start of May, coming back after a month off racing, Mercedes has introduced 26 line items deemed sufficient for the FIA’s declaration list – the lowest number of the top four teams.
Ferrari has introduced the most, with 39 line items, while McLaren is just one behind, on 38, and Red Bull on 35.
This shows that Mercedes had a reasonable performance buffer at the start of the season as, despite being around 10-15 line items behind its immediate rivals on development parts, the W17 remains the best all-round machine.
That’s despite the resurgence of Lando Norris with victories in Budapest and Zandvoort, and what looked like a victory in Madrid until an unfortunately-timed Virtual Safety Car wrecked his chances.
In qualifying, a Mercedes hasn’t been on pole position since the Belgian Grand Prix, when Antonelli took top spot at Spa-Francorchamps in mid-July.
Since before the summer break, Mercedes has teased a big upgrade package for the W17 to come in the second half of the season, with the team having worked diligently within the constraints of the budget cap to plan out the update and how best to introduce it to the car.
But could the car return to outright dominance in the final third of this year’s championship? It’s certainly a possibility, as the team is set to roll out its most substantive upgrade package during the course of the upcoming triple-header of races.
Speaking on the Nu Silver Arrows radio show, Mercedes’ trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin revealed the plan and the extent of the step expected with the new parts fitted.
“The updates [are] going to come from Malaysia onwards,” Shovlin said, referring to the Sepang weekend that falls as the second race of the triple.
“And hopefully we’ll make a decent step. I don’t think we’re going to be out front by miles, but hopefully we’ll be back into a position where we can really go into qualifying knowing that we’re fighting for pole.
“We haven’t got much new coming to Baku, but actually that’s a circuit that’s more about drag than downforce. So the car was good in Monza. Hopefully it will work well in Baku, but you need a car that can have a good straight-line speed.
“There are other things, though, you need in Baku, like the street circuit nature, almost that Monaco-esque, being able to deal with the low speed, keeping all the wheels on the ground.”
Reflecting on the last couple of races, Shovlin revealed that, in hindsight, Mercedes probably could have fought Norris harder for victory at Zandvoort with better execution, rather than it being down to a pace deficit in the car.
“In Zandvoort, I think we’ve now identified other things with how we could have run the car that I think would have solved a bit of that pace difference,” he said.
“With that being a sprint race format, you haven’t got the time to properly understand and solve some of these, some of these issues.”
Looking ahead to the weekend in Azerbaijan, the W17’s performance at Monza means that there are no reasons for concern on the part of the Brackley-based squad.
“I think if we hadn’t had Monza, we would again be saying, ‘Baku, we haven’t updated for a while, that’s going to be a tough circuit for us’.
“I think the fact that we showed that our car works well at these tracks that need low drag, we have an efficient car, we look good in a straight line, Red Bull are quite similar, and while that’s not the only thing you need at Baku, I think, if you’ve got that, you’re in with a decent shout, and then we’ve got to sort it out for the rather twisty, wiggly bit through the castle and those corners.
“But we’re looking forward to it, and it is a track that George has been good at before. Kimi knows it now; it’s not his first year, and hopefully we’ll be in a position to fight for a win.”
