No one could’ve predicted Mercedes would win two back-to-back races in 2024 at the start of the season. However, since their Canadian GP front wing upgrade, the Silver Arrows have cracked the code with the W15. George Russell’s pole and win in Canada and Austria respectively was backed up well by Lewis Hamilton breaking his win hiatus in Silverstone. While Russell could not finish the British GP, he did not fail to boast about Mercedes’ improved performance and warn rival teams.
After a difficult day on Friday practice at the British GP, Russell looked into Hamilton’s data and made changes. This resulted in some instant performance gain as he was the fastest all day on Saturday.
Despite starting his home race on pole, the 26-year-old could not see the finish line and had to retire his car because of a water system issue. Regardless, Russell was happy that Hamilton secured a second consecutive win for Mercedes, which also cemented their return to the front of the grid.
Per RacingNews365, Russell stated after the race, “It’s incredible. Lewis [Hamilton] taking the win, but we had the car, in normal dry circumstances to be one-two. We’re clearly back and I think we’ll be fighting for race wins more often now.”
Congrats Lewis, you deserve it
Gutted to retire so early and a tough pill to swallow at our home race, but another win for the team shows the progress we’re making. We’ll keep getting stronger pic.twitter.com/TOf3dFpQkC
— George Russell (@GeorgeRussell63) July 7, 2024
Mercedes have had similar false dawns in the past two seasons where they seemed to be back at the front. However, this time it seems different as their new W15 concept is delivering as they expected, unlike its zero sidepod predecessors.
Toto Wolff backs Russell’s claim
Mercedes picked the wrong developmental path with the zero pod concept at the start of these ground effect regulations. However, the Brackley outfit persisted and also made a significant overhaul in their 2024 car to pivot from the zero pod.
While the W15 did not hit the ground running in the initial races of this season, now Mercedes’ patience is paying off. Toto Wolff stated that they’ve finally cracked the code after struggling to pinpoint the problem area for the last two years.
Wolff said, “Five races ago we weren’t even contenders for the podium, which looked like the third year of non-performance, and then it clicked.” He explained that they have a better sense of the development direction the W15 can improve in.
This one is special pic.twitter.com/eMReN71s4R
— Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) July 7, 2024
“We are finding performance, we are putting it on the car and it translates into lap time and that wasn’t the case for the last two years”, Wolff added.
The Mercedes boss attributed this positive change to James Allison who was reinstated as the technical director back in the middle of 2023. Now, thanks to Allison they have sorted their aero concept issues and will look to improve at this pace to fight for more race wins.
