Mercedes reveal change of F1 car development focus and early plans for W15

The German manufacturer has spent much of the past year and a half rectifying issues that have cropped up with their troubled W13 and W14 challengers, with the team struggling to get a proper grasp on new aerodynamic regulations that were introduced in 2022. 

As a result, Mercedes have spent most of the last two campaigns playing catch up to runaway leaders Red Bull. Since changing their aerodynamic concept in Monaco, Mercedes have been making small gains in their bid to understood how best to extract the maximum out of their revised car. 

Having diverted much attention and resources to problem-solving, Mercedes are now aiming to concentrate purely on finding performance with the development of their 2024 car, the W15. 

“It is fair to say that with these regulations and the way the cars work, we have been very focused on fixing problems,” Shovlin said in Mercedes’ post-race debrief video. “It might be bouncing or a balance issue that you are trying to solve.

“But as we are making progress on that, the actual way that you develop a car is you are more looking for just performance.

“So you get less focused on a big list of things that you need to solve, and more just on where we can bring the lap time.

“The focus for next year's car is that we make sure the key decisions give us a lot of scope for development. You can see this year just how much performance all the teams are bringing as they go through the year, and you need to be able to bring that performance.

“But as I said, we are a little bit less focused on solving this list of issues and just looking at how can we make a good step in lap time, and hopefully a step that is going to get us back to regular pole positions and being able to challenge for wins.”

Mercedes lie second in the F1 constructors' championship, 229 points behind Red Bull, heading into this weekend's Belgian Grand Prix.