Mercedes ‘in a much better position’ after ironing out previous F1 car flaws

Mercedes believe they are in a “much better position than 12 months ago” after successfully addressing some of the flaws that plagued their previous F1 cars.

Following two challenging and frustrating seasons with the troubled W13 and W14 cars, Mercedes are confident their revamped W15 challenger is a significant improvement on its predecessors.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell both lacked confidence in the rear-end of the W14 but they are already more comfortable in Mercedes’ latest model after three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain.

“We've had three useful days here in Bahrain and managed to make good progress understanding the W15,” said Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin.

"Compared to last year’s car, the feedback from the drivers is very different and more positive, which is encouraging.

“The team has worked hard to iron out the handling flaws that were integral to the W14, and it's great that we seem to have put a number of those problems behind us.

"Over the course of the test we've made good steps on our understanding of the car. The task of the next few days is to pick through the results and put together the best package to take into the race weekend.

“It’s never easy to make predictions on pace from testing, as all teams are quite effective at hiding their pace when they want to.

“It's clear that we are in a much better position than 12 months ago though.”

Despite admitting Red Bull “clearly are out in the distance”, Hamilton, who is leaving Mercedes to join Ferrari in 2025, says the team have definitely improved their car for the 2024 season.

"It felt much more enjoyable to drive. We still have time to find,” added the seven-time world champion.

"It's a good platform to work from, a much better car to start the season with.”

Russell, who rounded out the Bahrain test with the second-quickest time behind Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, says he and Hamilton now have the confidence to attack medium and high-speed corners.

"The car last year was really challenging to drive," Russell explained. “Lewis and I had no confidence in it, it felt like it was going to bite us every single corner.

"We can attack the medium and high-speed corners without the rear end snapping out. And we feel like we've made a really good step in terms of the consistency of the car. We can really lean on it better than we've been able to in the past.

"And this was a huge focus throughout last year. We saw many flaws with the W14, which the team have done a really great job to rectify.

"And we've now got a car mechanically where the aero guys can go in focus on just building downforce upon that, whereas in the past, whatever we did aerodynamically there were underlying issues with the race car that took a while to understand, and so on."