After two years of struggle, Mercedes is finally clawing its way back to the top, thanks to its mid-season upgrades in 2024. Toto Wolff now, reveals the Silver Arrows’ approach which helped them win three of the last four races, and translates their impressive simulator performance into on-track results.
“We succeeded, but we found new critical points,” says Wolff in an interview. He explains that their goal was to get rid of the issues that plagued their previous year’s car – the W14. “This made the picture clearer: we ticked a lot of boxes that we thought were the cause of our problems. There weren’t many left and the team worked hard to resolve the situation.”
From those very first laps at Silverstone in February, to three wins in the last four races – it’s been a crazy first half of the season
Rest up W15, 10 to go after the summer break pic.twitter.com/9hwAw5w3tI
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) August 9, 2024
Lewis Hamilton’s P2 finish in the Chinese GP Sprint was a positive indicator, which helped the team realize the W15’s true potential. He adds, “When we came to Europe, these encouraging signs came again, and we saw a real correlation between the wind tunnel, the simulator, and the track.”
Mercedes got a new floor and a front wing, which helped them overcome 2023’s problems. Technical Director James Allison wondered how “we could have been so dumb” when the team finally found a fix. When new upgrades came in, George Russell put his W15 on pole in Canada and could have won that race had he not made mistakes.
Still, it was the start of something special, as for the first time since 2021, Mercedes could fight for the win.
Can Mercedes challenge Red Bull for the 2024 title?
Given how good Mercedes’ development has been this season, its 2025 car will likely be an evolution of the W15. The probability of the team launching a serious Title charge is quite high. But their expectations for 2024, remain unknown–at least officially.
With 10 races to go, Mercedes are 142 points behind Red Bull, which was down to their poor start to this year’s campaign. It is a huge deficit to overcome, and even if Mercedes outperforms Red Bull in the last leg of the campaign, it may be difficult for the Brackley-based team to dream about winning the Championship for the first time in three years.
Mercedes’ focus, as a result, would be to finish the year as strongly as possible, and at the same time, build an outright Title winning car for the start of 2025.
