Mercedes confirm ‘fairly substantial set of new clothes’ for W15 upon F1’s return in Austin

Mercedes technical director James Allison confirmed a “fairly substantial” upgrade package will be due for the team in Austin, upon Formula 1’s return.

The sport has begun a four-week interval between races, before two triple-headers that will conclude the F1 2024 season, with the teams using this time to prepare as best they can for the run-in.

Mercedes set to bring fresh upgrades to Austin upon F1’s return

Mercedes went into the summer break off the back of three victories in four races, but have since taken one combined podium in the four races since the restart after George Russell’s P3 finish in Azerbaijan.

With a substantial gap to come, and no mandated factory shutdown, technical director Allison confirmed their final upgrades of the season are set to come with them to the Circuit of The Americas.

When asked how Mercedes will be spending this gap between races, Allison told the team’s post-Singapore debrief: “Well, we’ll be trying to figure out how to mitigate what ailed us this weekend, how to figure out how to make the tyres run better on these sort of overheating circuits, and we’ll be also doing quite a lot of work to bring our last upgrade of the season together.

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“We’ve got a fairly substantial set of new clothes for the car coming for Austin that we hope will give us a decent weekend there, so we’ve got to deliver all that and get ourselves ready for these last few races of the year.”

Russell held off a challenge from Charles Leclerc for fourth place in Singapore on Sunday, while Lewis Hamilton finished sixth after an early stop on soft tyres.

Allison praised those back at Brackley for their work at the weekend, with early indications from free practice showing that it was set to be a tough race for Mercedes.

“I think Sunday’s result was pretty difficult for the team, and Friday was signalling some of maybe what we might have expected by way of difficulty,” he said.

“The anomaly really was Saturday, where we managed to get from a difficult Friday to a pretty creditable grid position.

“And there, [I] have to give great credit to the team back at the factory, who really did help turn around a difficult Friday, put us much further up the grid than Friday might have suggested and give us a result that, while disappointing, was not disastrous as a consequence.

“I would say that probably the trade we made, although unwittingly, was that we improved the car for single lap, for qualifying, but it was quite a painful thing then on long runs.”

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