Revealed: The key issue still frustrating Mercedes ahead of W16 introduction

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained the team will look to resolve a lingering issue in slow-speed corners in the development of the W16.

Shovlin said slow corners following each other is where Mercedes have had a “weakness” in performance, and while the team brought an upgrade with them to Austin, they did not expect that package to bring a solution with it.

Mercedes looking to solve slow-speed corner ‘weakness’ in W16 development

Mercedes sit fourth in the Constructors’ standings heading into the final three races of the season, and the attention of most teams is likely to be on the development of their 2025 challengers.

For Mercedes, they confirmed they are “very busy” working on trying to improve their performance out of slower corners, in the hope it will bring them closer to their front-running rivals next season.

“Where we tend to be weak, it is in the slow-speed corners, particularly the ones where you have got one corner following into another,” Shovlin said in Mercedes’ post-Brazil debrief.

“There is a lot of turning of the car, and that is a weakness that we need to work on. We did not expect this update kit to improve that.

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“All we expected was this to just lift the base performance of the car. In terms of what we have seen, we are confident it is doing what was expected.

“However, we are also confident there is some fundamentals that we have got to get to grips with with this car in order to fix them on the W16, and we are very busy with that right now, and hopefully making the right changes over the winter so that we are not struggling with these weaknesses next year.”

With that, Shovlin was asked what lessons the team are looking to take into the development of the W16 – with next year’s car already likely to be underway in its design process.

He confirmed that lingering slow speed issue is what the team will be looking to address, and they will be using the remaining races of 2024 to gather more data to inform the development of the W16.

“The main thing in terms of learning is that the corners that we are weak in are still the same ones,” Shovlin said.

“It is the interconnected, slow corners. That is normally where we trip up. Going into this weekend, we certainly had sector two in Brazil, which has a lot of those corners on our radar as an area that we might struggle.

“The big focus in these remaining races for us is learning what we can. We are in a position in the championship where we cannot challenge in front of us. It is very unlikely we are going to see any challenge from behind.

“Our focus has very much shifted to learning what we need to this year to apply to next year in order to get on top of those issues.

“In Brazil, it was useful having that wet running because you want to get a read on the car in the wet.

“There is always a few wet quali and race sessions over the year. It was reassuring to see that the pace in those conditions was decent, but we are going to be looking at all the remaining tracks to assess performance and just confirm what we understand about this car and whether the changes we are hoping to make for next year are going to improve those areas.

“Vegas has a lot of straight line and low-speed corners. Qatar is a faster track. And then, finishing in Abu Dhabi, which is a mix of everything, it will give us a good read on how we are performing and who is the benchmark.

“Sometimes it is Red Bull, sometimes McLaren, sometimes Ferrari, but it will allow us to establish the gap that we need to close down over those winter months.”

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