Lewis Hamilton confirms Mercedes W15 upgrade ‘roll back’ amid performance drop

Mercedes will be going back to a previous spec W15 floor in Baku as the team try to find the cause of their post-summer break slump.

Mercedes went into the F1 2024 summer shutdown carrying great momentum after claiming three wins from four races, but have not been able to hit those heights since the season resumed, with P5 their best result across the Zandvoort and Monza rounds.

Mercedes W15 upgrade U-turn as ‘question marks’ persist

At the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes introduced a new floor and diffuser for the W15. The signs were positive there as Lewis Hamilton took the win – in what would have been a Mercedes 1-2 before George Russell was stripped of the win for an underweight car – but the performance has not been at that level since.

Mercedes believe the upgrades have increased the W15’s downforce, though are assessing whether the package has introduced any unintended impacts on the handling.

And as part of the analysis, Mercedes will revert to the old floor for this weekend’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

“I think that there’s lots of question marks on a lot of it,” said Hamilton in regards to Mercedes’ post-summer break dip.

“I think we’re just trying to understand it. It could be a number of things. It could be track dependent. It could be the upgrade.

“My gut is telling me it’s probably the upgrade, but it’s hard to see the difference between the two.

“But we’re going to try this weekend, roll back on some of it and see whether or not we can spot it.

“There’s a lot of work going on just to analyse it, because it really gives the team a direction of where they’re going in development, not only for this car, for the next year as well.”

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell head-to-head F1 2024 stats

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head race statistics between team-mates

👉 F1 2024: Head-to-head qualifying record between team-mates

Russell was presented with Hamilton’s “gut feeling” that the upgrade was to blame for Mercedes’ Zandvoort and Monza setbacks, leading him to stress that the performance gain was not expected to be significant with the updated floor.

However, with the old floor returning for Baku, it gives Mercedes clarity on what that will offer.

“We’ll see this weekend,” said Russell when asked for his feeling on the impact of the upgrade.

“The upgrade wasn’t a substantial performance improvement, and sometimes you’ve got to look at things just objectively. And we brought a new floor, we dropped in performance, and that was the main thing that changed.

“We knew the upgrade wasn’t kind of going to set the world on fire. It was just sort of another step in the direction that we’ve been pursuing. So reverting back to the sort of pre-Spa iteration of floor, if everything were to be absolutely correct on paper, it was a small delta.

“So I think it’s better the devil you know sometimes. We know what that floor offers. We know exactly where the setup needs to be. And sometimes, with a new upgrade, it takes a number of races to sort of learn and understand.”

However, Russell doubts Mercedes are going to go from Baku to Singapore armed with a clear answer on whether or not the floor was where they went wrong.

He also teased another upgrade to come for the W15.

“I don’t think, no matter the performance this weekend, we will come away and conclusively say the floor was or was not the problem,” he claimed.

“I think we’ll just get through this race weekend, see how we get on and you know, it’s not going to be too long until we have another new upgrade, which will change things once again.”

Russell also believes that the tight nature at the front of the Formula 1 grid – with F1 2024 so far seeing seven different race winners – has been making for more extreme swings in fortunes when not quite nailing a race weekend.

“I think now Formula 1 is more competitive than we’ve seen it for 10 years maybe, in terms of the number of drivers and teams who can compete for the good result,” he said.

“I think if we take last year as an example, if we were two-tenths off the pace, you’d finish in the same position. Or if you overachieve by a tenth or two, you’d probably also finish in the same position.

“The same goes for Red Bull. They could have an off weekend by three-tenths and they’d still win the race, and it will just go under the radar.

“So I think we’ve had two weekends where we have dipped in form slightly, potentially not quite nailed a number of things, but it could have easily swung a different direction.

“I started third last week [at Monza], was in third in Zandvoort, and if the race had panned out very slightly differently, could have potentially ended up on the podium, and we wouldn’t be talking about this different performance.

“So I think it just goes to show that unless you nail your weekends, you’ll be sort of punished for it.”

Mercedes sit P4 in the F1 2024 Constructors’ Championship standings ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, 115 points behind Ferrari a position ahead.

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