Mercedes has made a significant change to its W15 for the remainder of the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, opting to ditch its newly developed floor in favor of its previous specification.
The decision comes after a frustrating Friday practice session at Spa-Francorchamps, where the team struggled to match the pace of its rivals.
The Brackley-based outfit had arrived in Belgium with high hopes, buoyed by its strong showing recently at Silverstone, F1’s previous high-speed circuit.
However, the reality of Spa was far less positive, with both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton enduring a difficult day. A particularly troubling issue was the car's straight-line speed deficit of up to 0.9 seconds compared to the benchmark teams.
This shortfall immediately raised immediate questions about the impact of the newly introduced upgrades, including the floor.
Despite extensive overnight analysis, Mercedes was unable to definitively pinpoint the floor as the root cause of the performance shortfall.
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With wet weather forecasted for Saturday, and driver confidence paramount in such conditions, the team opted for a more conservative approach by reverting to the previous floor specification.
Mercedes is expected to dig deep into its data during F1’s summer break to gain a clear picture on whether its new floor was the sole culprit behind the team's issues on Friday.
©Mercedes
Ahaed of this weekend’s round of racing, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin had expressed optimism about the Brackley squad’s new aero element.
“The main thing is the floor. It's just another step of development that we've been able to bring here,” he said.
“It's also nice to get some new parts on the car, because the reality of a cost cap is you're constantly sort of patching them up, trying to repair them. Hopefully this will be a step forward."
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