Mercedes abandons problematic floor upgrade for Baku. Hamilton and Russell will not have to try the problematic Mercedes floor introduced at Spa in either session for this weekend’s race in Baku.
Mercedes will not be running its troubled floor, which was first introduced in Belgium, at any point in the Azerbaijan Grand Prix as it assesses whether it caused a dip in form after the win in Belgium.
Mercedes went into the recent summer break on the back of three wins from four races – including a 1-2 in Belgium – but the victory eventually awarded to Lewis Hamilton came after it was decided not to drive on its new floor after it discovered problems with it. at the opening training sessions of that event.
At the Dutch GP, where Mercedes struggled for race pace after, a planned back-to-back test of new and old floor specifications was thwarted by bad weather at Zandvoort, where Mercedes decided to install a new floor.
He then completed Friday’s side-by-side assessment at Monza for the final time – around Kimi Antonelli’s Andrea who crashed into the barriers and left the Mercedes on the spare floor, while he later fitted a new one for the rest of the weekend.
Russell then managed to finish qualifying in 3rd place, but failed to make an impression in the race after his first corner error, while Hamilton was unable to get close to the leading positions in either qualifying or the race in Italy.
Mercedes decided not to re-run the floor from Spa in Baku to get a full weekend of data on how the car – which had upgrades to the diffuser, wing, front wing and hall which remained fitted, meaning the Mercedes was not returned to its full specifications before the Hungarian GP.
When asked to comment on what he suspected prevented Mercedes from copying its Spa form since then – particularly if there were conditions or circumstances alongside the floorboarding confusion that may have played a part – Hamilton replied: “There are a lot of question marks on a lot toga.”
“I think we’re just trying to understand it. It could be several things. It could depend on the track, it could be an upgrade. My gut tells me it could be an upgrade, but it’s hard to tell the difference between the two.”
“But we’re going to try this weekend [and] get some of that back and see if we can spot it or not.”
“A lot of work is done only on analysis because it gives the team a better direction where they are going for development, not only for this car but also for next year.”
This will allow Mercedes to decide how to adjust the floorboard or other areas of the W15 in the future, or even ditch it altogether, given that the team is confident it’s a step forward in terms of adding downforce, albeit a small one.
McLaren made a significant gain this year by holding off on planned underbody upgrades that they thought would make their boid faster after spotting a problem in the development data that they felt was likely to set them back in a similar fashion to Mercedes, Aston Martin, Ferrari and Red Bull.
When given Hamilton’s feel, Russell’s comment ahead of the Azerbaijan GP was: “The upgrade didn’t improve the performance significantly and sometimes you have to look at things objectively.”
“We brought a new floor, our performance dropped and that was the main thing that changed.”
“We knew the upgrade wasn’t going to set the world on fire. It was just another step in the direction we were aiming for. So going back to the pre-Spa iteration of the floor, if everything was absolutely correct on paper, that’s a small delta.”
