Toto Wolff: Mercedes’ F1 development “making much more sense” after upgrades

Toto Wolff says Mercedes' F1 development path is “making much more sense” following a recent upgrade push aimed at curing issues which have hampered their season.

For a third consecutive year, Mercedes have endured a challenging start to an F1 season, despite radically overhauling their car concept with their W15 challenger over the winter.

Mercedes initially struggled to get to grips with the W15’s inconsistent competitive swings and, in particular, a balance weakness that has blighted performance across high and low speed corners.

But recent upgrades - including a new front wing design - have improved the team’s prospects. Mercedes produced their best weekend of the season in Canada, with George Russell claiming their first pole position and podium of the year in third, while Lewis Hamilton took fourth.

“I think definitely since Imola we’ve taken the right steps and put parts on the car that were working,” Mercedes team principal Wolff said in Montreal.

“That was something we were struggling with in the past couple of years, and now directionally we seem to be adding performance every weekend, and with new parts coming also in Barcelona that should help us. So I would very much hope that we can continue this positive trajectory.

“I’m always a bit worried when you’ve been carried away that everything seems to now be falling into place, because this is a difficult sport. We’ve had this positive trajectory now for the last three races and everything seems to be making much more sense. The stopwatch will tell us.”

Wolff confirmed Mercedes will continue bringing new parts to their 2024 car at this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix at Barcelona.

“Sometimes when things interact well with each other, the overall flow structure becomes more efficient, you are able to optimise the ride height and bit-by-bit we’ve added more performance. So another step in Barcelona and hopefully we will see it on the stopwatch,” he said.

“Sometimes when you bring a highly visible part like bodywork or a front wing, this is pretty much the talk of what has changed the performance. The truth is we have, over the last few races, brought so many new parts, visible and invisible to the eye, that have contributed milliseconds to more performance.

“I think this is where those marginal gains then have that positive effect and that was just a huge effort of the factory. So I think the wheel has started to get some real motion now.”