© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin says the team wants “to be fighting at the front next year”, so “there’ll be significant changes”, but “you won’t want to change the architecture of the car”.
In the last several races Mercedes has managed to get back into the fight with the top teams, and for next year they intend to make even more changes to improve their car’s performance.
“We haven’t made decisions yet on does the chassis stay the same? Does the gearbox stay the same?” Mercedes’ Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin explained.
“The reality is you probably can’t change everything. We’re at a stage now where we’re trying to evaluate those to look for the best return for your spend in the cost cap.
“I think, aerodynamically, our car and most people’s cars will be an evolution of what we have today.
“There’ll be significant changes on there but you won’t want to change the architecture of the car and take a big hit in the wind tunnel that you then have to recover.
“I don’t think many people will be doing that.”
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Shovlin then explained where the team’s main weaknesses are.
“The main remaining weaknesses – in hot conditions at rear-limited circuits, we’re not as good as the McLarens, or Max [Verstappen’s Red Bull].
“We saw that in Budapest, and we saw that in Austria, but our gap on race pace in Budapest was smaller.
“We’ve made progress there over the sequence of these recent races. If you looked at Silverstone, we were competitive.
“So I think the main weakness is that, but then everyone’s trying to develop their cars. If you’re not developing at a faster rate than the others, then you will quite quickly slip backward.
“So there’s always going to be a focus on just how much development you can bring.”
Shovlin added that the team is determined to keep bringing performance to their current car, before evaluating where they want to go with their 2025 challenger.
“We can only see a month or six weeks into the future because that’s the sort of horizon that you’re working with in your wind tunnel.
“What we don’t know is whether will we be able to keep delivering performance from the wind tunnel, from a vehicle dynamics group, and mechanical design group.
“We will continue at the factory to find as much performance as we can. So that is what you are calling aggressive development, we’re flat-out trying to find performance.
“Later on in the year, there have to be discussions around: ‘Is it this car or does it wait for the next car?’
“The cost cap inevitably means that those discussions are a trade between performance gain and cost.
“We do want to be fighting at the front next year, so we’re always going to make decisions that mean that that is a possibility,” the Briton concluded.
