Mercedes has conceded that it was “surprised we weren’t quicker at the start” in the 2024 Formula 1 season as it was adamant the W15 was a “good car underneath”.
The German marque entered the campaign optimistic that a revamped charger had eradicated the recalcitrant characteristics that were embedded in its predecessor.
However, Mercedes endured a setback in the nascent rounds as struggles to optimise the car across corner speed ranges saw it end without a podium in eight races.
But an aggressive development route has seen Mercedes overcome its issues and return to the sharp end with six successive podiums and three wins in four rounds.
Mercedes Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin has admitted the team was certain the W15 in its launch-spec had inherent potential waiting to be unlocked.
Asked whether there was a eureka moment behind the turnaround, Shovlin said tomedia including Motorsport Week: “I mean it isn’t so much a breakthrough moment.
“I think we always thought this car on its day it seemed to be quick, but being able to do that across a whole weekend was a bit of a challenge for us in the early part of the year.
“It’s now more usable; that’s not one development that’s lots of things that we’ve done to try and get on top of those issues.
“But as I said we were surprised we weren’t quicker at the start.
“We thought we’d made a good car and underneath it was a good car; it just had some problems that we had to get on top of and now we’re seeing the results of that hard work.”
Shovlin believes that Mercedes’ approach to bringing upgrades to almost each race weekend and not encountering setbacks is a testament to the entire team’s work.
“I mean the rate of them is really high at the moment which is just a feature of how well the organisation is working,” he explained.
“A lot of success in Formula 1 is about learning and it’s about ideas and at the moment the rate of learning has been high this year.
“The generation of ideas has been good and ultimately that’s where all the new parts and new developments come from.”
Shovlin has pinpointed improved correlation between the wind tunnel and the track as an instrumental asset in Mercedes overcoming its past woes under this ruleset.
“Well the better your models the better you can develop offline and as I’ve said we’ve got lots of different models,” he highlighted.
“Correlation is never perfect, but it’s an area where we’ve definitely seen improvement and that ability to model what the car is going to do is one of your best ways of developing these days when you haven’t got endless amounts of tunnel testing or track testing.”
