© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says the team has set “some very ambitious performance targets to make sure we were competitive enough to qualify on pole and win races by the end of the year”.
Mercedes’ progress with their car throughout 2024 culminated in two consecutive wins in Austrian and Britain.
As the Hungarian Grand Prix Friday Press Conference, the team’s Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin was asked if the team was surprised by their rapid progress.
“I wouldn’t say we’ve been surprised by it,” the Briton said.
“We set ourselves some very ambitious performance targets to make sure we were competitive enough to qualify on pole and win races by the end of the year.
“And then we put in some ambitious plans to meet that in stages with various updates.
“What has been brilliant to see is just how well the whole organisation has responded to that challenge to try and get us back towards the front and what we have done has delivered.
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“It’s nice when you’re in a situation where all your update kits, all the mechanical changes that we’ve made to the car have done what we hoped for.
“And it’s reassuring that we’re sort of seeing that slow and steady move back towards the front.”
Asked how much more is there to come with the car, Shovlin said:
“Well, we’re flat out developing it. You don’t know what you’re going to be able to bring right to the end of the year because you haven’t done that work, but more of what we’ve been doing will be coming over the next few races, drip feeding it in more than going for big packages.
“But the mid-term future is quite exciting still, lots of areas that we’re working on and hopefully those will come through and bring us the lap time that we hope.
Shov then explained the team has not been focusing only on the aero side, but also the mechanical package.
“Well, we’ve been working on the mechanical package as well. We’re trying to focus on every area that delivers performance because you need your wind tunnel to be delivering.
“But it’s only so hard you can make that work. Some of the differentiating steps are when you can bring a package that isn’t just the aero development that everyone’s trying to do.
“So we’ve made good gains there, and it’s a reflection that the whole team’s working well together.
“All the different functions of performance are all trying to work together to make sure that we can bring updates that do deliver what we need.”
Since the conditions in Hungary are expected to be hotter than in Britain, and hot conditions have previously been Mercedes’ weak spot, Shovlin says the Hungarian Grand Prix will be a good test for the car.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s a good circuit to test that. And when you’re trying to focus on one area of performance, if that’s rear overheating, the best place to learn and understand your issues is a circuit that exacerbates that problem, even if we’d prefer all of them be like Silverstone.
“But they’re not, and it’s a good place for us to work on that problem,” he concluded.
