George Russell believes Mercedes has “more of a race car” on its hands with its W15 contender, a design where the team can afford to go more aggressive in terms of aero set-up.
In 2022, Mercedes opted for a radical approach to Formula 1’s new technical regulations based on ground-effect aerodynamics.
But the ‘zero sidepod’ concept that featured on its W13 car and on the early version of last year’s W14 proved a failure, and one that took Mercedes’ engineers a considerable amount of time to accept.
This year, the Brackley squad rolled out in Bahrain an all-new design that is a significant improvement all-round and which offers the team a solid foundation on which to build.
“I think last year the morale was really quite low at this point because there’d been so much work across the winter when we arrived and had a car that wasn’t performing anything close to what we expected, not just in terms of lap time, but in terms of the characteristics that the car faced,” Russell explained last weekend at Sakhir where the Briton finished fifth.
“Now we’ve put a lot of work in over this winter and the car is performing as we would expect in terms of the way it’s driving.
“We just need to make it faster now. So, as I said, it’s always the stopwatch that counts, but at least the simulator is correlating well.
“The work we’ve done has worked as we’ve expected. We just need to make the car faster.”
Russell feels that Mercedes’ new charger will allow its drivers to exploit more aggressive aero set-ups.
“I’m confident that this is much more… it feels more like a race car,” he said. “And I think we can now afford to be more aggressive at the set-up.
“The aero can be more aggressive with the mapping of the car and where they put the downforce on.
“Whereas it felt like in the last two years everything we did was a bit of a plaster and it never solved the underlying issue that the car faced.
“And I think for the first time in two years we feel like the numbers are backing that up.
“We saw all of the issues we had when we went back through the data that W14 and W13 had, and we’re definitely much more confident this is more of a race car.
“But as I said, there’s only one thing that matters and that’s how quickly it goes around the track. And right now it’s not quite working out.”
Ahead of the start of Mercedes’ 2024 campaign, tech boss James Allison was confident that his team of engineers had produced a “happier handling” car, especially regarding its rear end.
Russell confirmed that this assumption had panned out, even more than expected.
“I think we’ve dropped tools in our pocket to increase it [rear stability] even further,” he added.
“And we’ve actually gone back on a few of the aggressive designs that we did over this winter because for this circuit, better than we’ve gotten slightly too much stability in this, causing a bit too much understeer in the corners.”
Russell noted the flexibility that now benefits Mercedes, pointing specifically to the W15’s adaptable front suspension arrangement.
“So I think the good thing with this car is we’ve got the flexibility to tune it, as we spoke about with the wishbone setup,” he said. “That isn’t optimal for Bahrain. It may work better at other circuits.
“And we’ve got a number of items for this car that will give us that flexibility to tune it and you know we go to Jeddah next week – totally different circuit, faster circuit, lower downforce circuit, higher grip circuit, let’s see what that brings.
“But it seemed we did a really good job to achieve what we set out and that was to have a much better platform now we can build upon there and see what it takes us.”
During the early stages of the 2023 season, Lewis Hamilton raised concerns that Mercedes did not consider his feedback regarding the car's design, particularly the decision to retain the narrow sidepod concept. He believed this design choice hindered the car's performance.
Russell says the team’s engineers have since made every effort to address his teammate’s criticism, while he also helped guide them in their work associated with this year’s car.
“I’m not an aerodynamicist and I think a driver’s job is to maximize the package, what you’re given,” he admitted. “So we’ve been very clear for the last two years, the limitations that we are facing.
“Lewis and I have always had very similar comments. In slightly different ways. He was talking a lot about the seating position, the rear being unstable and ultimately we have cured that problem we believe maybe in a number of changes that we’ve done. There’s never one silver bullet.”
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