Mercedes eye F1 ‘experiments’ as upgrade decision confirmed

Mercedes is eyeing “more experimentation” across the final rounds of the F1 season after halting any fresh upgrades. 

The team is certain to finish fourth in the constructors’ championship as it is 146 points behind third-placed Red Bull and 280 ahead of fifth-placed Aston Martin. It would be the worst finish for the team since fifth in 2012.

In Austin for the United States Grand Prix, the team brought a major raft of updates to the W15, but George Russell destroyed his package in a qualifying crash, although it is likely he will have the floor back for the São Paulo GP following repairs.

After three big crashes over recent race weekends, the team is short on spare parts. Although it has no concern about breaking the cost cap, it will not be bringing fresh upgrades to any of the final races.

Instead, it is hoping to experiment with the car with an eye on 2025, when Andrea Kimi Antonelli will partner with George Russell.

“It is certainly a good opportunity for us to do a bit more experimentation in the race weekends, but the key thing for us is making sure we have done the important bits of learning before the 2025 season,” explained trackside engineering chief Andrew Shovlin.

“We are not bringing any more major updates to the car. It might be that we have some test items, some small bits of bodywork that we are looking at, but this would be very much in the context of learning for the future.

“There will be lots of opportunity to do set up work, lots of opportunity to use the two cars to compare different approaches and hopefully over the next few races, we can just add to the learning we have already made during this season.”

In Mexico, Mercedes ran split specs on its two cars, with Russell on the Silverstone upgrades and Lewis Hamilton armed with the fresh parts, allowing for a back-to-back comparison. 

Whilst the team did gather some data as it finished fourth and fifth with Hamilton ahead, Shovlin explained why it was not ideal.

“We have some useful data and what we have seen from the update kit to date is it is delivering performance where we expect,” he said. 

“What we were hoping for, that we did not get to the full extent, was a clean run with both cars where they were in clear air so we could see how they perform through the race.

“The two cars spent an awful lot of the race in traffic, which does affect your analysis.

“But we can see from what we have collected that the kit is useful and is performing more or less as expected. 

“We are going to continue our learning into Brazil and hopefully get some clean laps and good running with that update kit.”