Mercedes provide ‘crucial’ update on new F1 floor upgrade 

An updated floor was part of Mercedes’ last major upgrade package of the year that was brought to the recent United States Grand Prix, where Lewis Hamilton finished second before being disqualified for excessive plank wear. 

After swooning over the upgrade, Hamilton followed his strong Austin performance up with another second place finish behind Max Verstappen at last weekend’s Mexico City Grand Prix. The seven-time world champion has stated that he is now happier with the balance of his Mercedes and has more confidence to push the W14. 

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin explained that the team have taken “very encouraging signs” from the upgraded floor. 

“If we look at the performance in Austin, we look at the performance here [in Mexico], being able to race cars like McLaren and Ferrari effectively, we’d say that the track data is definitely suggesting that we’ve made a forward step,” Shovlin said in the team’s post-race debrief video. 

“Now, bear in mind that all the top teams have been bringing updates to the car over the last few races. It is crucial that you can match them on development, even better them, to be able to continue to fight them on track.

“The other thing is we collect a lot of data off the car, so pressures off the floor, pressures off the wings, loads on the car, and all that data is correlating really well with what we’re seeing in the wind tunnel.

“And that’s crucial for next year, because this floor is actually a step towards the development direction that we want to take for 2024. So very encouraging signs but still a lot of work ahead of us.”

Mercedes had a difficult start to the weekend in Mexico City but Shovlin revealed that work carried out on the simulator on Friday night was key to their improvement. 

“When we finished Friday, we analysed the problems with the car, we were discussing with the drivers where we need to improve it, and then we hand over to the simulator team back in Brackley, we had Tom Gamble, one of our development drivers, in the car this weekend, and they worked through the night going through a whole range of set-ups and luckily they found a nice direction where we were able to improve both the single-lap and the long run,” he added. 

“That was a set-up that was showing it was easier on the rear tyres, which was important because that was what with limiting in the race work that we did on Friday.

“Then in FP3 you could pretty immediately see that those changes had put us into a happier place. Now, it’s easier when you do land the set-up in the right place. But the reality is with weather conditions changing and the cars being different one year to the next, you can’t guarantee that. 

“And what’s really important is when you do have a difficult Friday that you’ve got the team and the tools in place to solve those problems and then come back fighting on Saturday.”