Mercedes boss Toto Wolff reckons the team’s dominant Las Vegas Grand Prix weekend has unearthed the “sweet spot” that it must strive to hit with its Formula 1 car.
The German marque managed to capitalise on the promising pace that saw it top all three practice sessions as George Russell headed a 1-2 finish from pole position.
Mercedes’ competitiveness at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit arrived as a complete shock amid the challenging period that the side had endured since the summer break.
Mercedes had shown an upturn prior to a slump that comprised one podium in eight rounds as Russell and Lewis Hamilton combined to land three wins in four races.
Hamilton’s two victories came at Silverstone and Spa-Francorchamps when there were cooler conditions present, which was also the case on a bigger scale in Vegas.
Wolff has admitted that it has been no coincidence that Mercedes’ W15 has proven to be at its best on the occasions when there have been lower track temperatures.
“I think that clearly you can correlate where we’ve been, where we’ve been strong,” Wolff told media including Motorsport Week post-race.
“We’ve been strong in Silverstone, we’ve been strong in Spa and then here in Las Vegas.
“I think it’s just keeping the car in a sweet spot, the tyres in the optimum window. We were very, very quick.
“I mean, we were two seconds quicker than our competition at times that George was pushing. And for the rest of the day, he was just managing his pace.”
Mercedes working towards consistent sweet spot
There have been several rounds this term where Mercedes has threatened to be in the mix at the sharp end but then been unable to sustain that pace over a weekend.
Wolff has acknowledged that Mercedes managing to piece together a consistent weekend at long last has uncovered the operating range the team now has to target.
“This one is a really important result,” Wolff added.
“You have locations over the weekend and then normally you can see where everything was here, that we’ve been not so good on in that session.
“But here, every single session, we were ahead.
“So, lots of field paper that allow us to say, well, at least we know where the sweet spot is, this is where we need to be, and then trying to find out how we can hit that target more often.”
Wolff has expressed that Mercedes must eliminate the temperature sensitivities associated with the W15 to unlock its peak pace on a more consistent basis in 2025.
Asked whether he knew why Mercedes was able to maintain the car in the ideal operating window in Las Vegas, Wolff responded: “Yeah, I think it kind of spirals into the bad zone when you break traction and then it’s hot.
“You kind of swing out of the window all the time, and when you break traction here, that was actually helpful to keep the temperature at the time.
“So clearly, there is an aspect that some teams really love the cold, and they expect a lot of performance.
“There’s some teams that are feeling so strong when it was hot in Singapore in the clouds and then they have dominated in the way they just controlled it in the way they wanted.
“So, yeah, it would be important to find a balance for next year.”
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