George Russell is convinced that Mercedes’ revised 2024 Formula 1 car has seen it eradicate the “plaster” solutions that had hampered it from solving past issues.
Mercedes opted to retain the ‘zeropod’ solution at the beginning of the previous campaign after an encouraging stream of results at the end of the 2022 campaign.
However, the team’s revisions failed to turn the design into a title-contending one, with Mercedes opting to abandon the concept with a seismic upgrade package.
Although the German marque would climb to second place in the championship, it trailed 451 points behind Red Bull and endured a first winless term since 2011.
Speaking ahead of finishing fifth in Bahrain, Russell admitted that the confidence within Mercedes is on the up with its revamped car compared to 12 months ago.
“I think last year the morale was really quite low at this point because there’d been so much work across the winter when we arrived and had a car that wasn’t performing anything close to what we expected, not just in terms of lap time, but in terms of the characteristics that the car faced,” Russell said.
“Now we’ve put a lot of work in over this winter and the car is performing as we would expect in terms of the way it’s driving.
“We just need to make it faster now. So, as I said, it’s always the stopwatch that counts, but at least the simulator is correlating well.
“The work we’ve done has worked as we’ve expected. We just need to make the car faster.”
Russell provided a positive review of the W15 after pre-season testing last week and believes that Mercedes has now imposed permanent fixes to its inherent flaws.
Asked whether he had more confidence to exploit the potential of the car, Russell replied: “Yeah, 100%. From what we’ve seen so far, obviously, it’s one circuit. We’ve only had one and a half days each.
“Maybe we’ll have a surprise when we go to Jeddah next week, but I’m confident that this is much more, it feels more like a race car.
“And I think we can now afford to be more aggressive at the set-up. The aero can be more aggressive with the mapping of the car and where they put the downforce on.
“Whereas it felt like in the last two years everything we did was a bit of a plaster and it never solved the underlying issue that the car faced.
“And I think for the first time in two years we feel like the numbers are backing that up. We saw all of the issues we had when we went back through the data that W14 and W13 had, and we’re definitely much more confident this is more of a race car.
“But as I said, there’s only one thing that matters and that’s how quickly it goes around the track. And right now it’s not quite working out.”
Mercedes Technical Director James Allison said that the main aim of its overhauled car was to dial out the “spiteful” rear-end traits of its recalcitrant W14 predecessor.
Quizzed on that, Russell said “nothing is telling us that this will be a problem further down the line”, citing how it even wound back on some “aggressive” design choices.
The Briton highlighted the altered front suspension configuration that Mercedes adopted in testing but won’t run this weekend as an example of its ambitious developments.
“I think we’ve dropped tools in our pocket to increase it [rear stability] even further,” he continued. “And we’ve actually gone back on a few of the aggressive designs that we did over this winter because for this circuit, better than we’ve gotten slightly too much stability in this, causing a bit too much understeer in the corners.
“So I think the good thing with this car is we’ve got the flexibility to tune it, as we spoke about with the wishbone setup. That isn’t optimal for Bahrain. It may work better at other circuits.
“And we’ve got a number of items for this car that will give us that flexibility to tune it and you know we go to Jeddah next week – totally different circuit, faster circuit, lower downforce circuit, higher grip circuit, let’s see what that brings.
“But it seemed we did a really good job to achieve what we set out and that was to have a much better platform now we can build upon there and see what it takes us.”
Lewis Hamilton had been vocal in the nascent stages of last season that Mercedes had not taken his feedback into account when retaining the slim sidepod structure.
Russell comments that the squad has endeavoured to address some of the complaints that his team-mate possessed, including the forward positioning of the cockpit.
Questioned if he had input into Mercedes’ latest car design, Russell replied: “Yeah, of course. I put my trust in the designers and aerodynamicists.
“I’m not an aerodynamicist and I think a driver’s job is to maximize the package, what you’re given.
“So we’ve been very clear for the last two years, the limitations that we are facing. Lewis and I have always had very similar comments. In slightly different ways. He was talking a lot about the seating position, the rear being unstable and ultimately we have cured that problem we believe maybe in a number of changes that we’ve done. There’s never one silver bullet.”
