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Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison says the team “will persist with the upgrade package and if it persists in winding up in the gravel, then we will put two and two together, but my guess is it will not”.
At the United States Grand Prix, Mercedes introduced its last big upgrade package of the 2024 season, however everything did not go according to plan, as both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell spun out at certain points.
The team’s Technical Director James Allison says the fact that it was a sprint weekend, and therefore testing time was very limited, contributed to the team’s troubles.
“We had a bumpy weekend, and we had our new clothes on the car, our so-called update 19 that we were quite excited about and still are quite excited about,” Allison said in the team’s race debrief video.
“But we also had a whole heap of things that are not normal. Lewis spun in Free Practice. We had George nearly lose the back end of the car as well. George crashed in qualifying. Lewis spun off in the race.
“All the things we measured suggested that the upgrade package was behaving as we would expect. The downforce was there.
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“We did not see prior to the spins anything breaking down on the flow structures under the car. There is every reason to think the updates were good and we will enjoy that for the remainder of the year.
“The spikiness that we saw that pitched us into the barriers on an unusual number of occasions was because we had the car too low, too stiff, and had the handling degrade unacceptably as a result.”
The Briton added he believes the upgrade package will ultimately be a success.
“Because it was a Sprint weekend, you get less time to dial that in than you normally would.
“We will find out in the coming races because we will persist with the upgrade package and if it persists in winding up in the gravel, then we will put two and two together. But my guess is it will not.
“My guess is that instead of having the unpleasant weekend we just had, we will see more of the promise that saw Lewis looking like he was going to storm to Sprint Quali pole and George being very near the front in that same session,” Allison concluded.
