Mercedes confident simulator correlation finally ‘in the right direction’

SPIELBERG, AUSTRIA - Mercedes are confident their simulator correlation is finally “in the right direction now” after early troubles at the start of the 2024 F1 season.

After enduring a difficult opening run of races, Mercedes admitted their start to the season had been impacted by a correlation weakness between findings from their simulator and on-track performance.

But Mercedes believe they have now made strides in improving this area after recent upgrades translated to competitive gains on track.

“I think we’ve got good correlation on the simulator now. So you treat each circuit separately in that regard,” Mercedes trackside performance director Andrew Shovlin told media including Crash.net at the Austrian Grand Prix.

“We’ve been bringing developments to the car, some of them mechanical, so we don’t need to declare those. But bringing a string of developments to the car so it’s a different thing every track we go to, that’s been the case for five or six races now.”

Shovlin added: “The key thing is the correlation on the simulator has improved.

“We didn’t stand a chance before, because if five degrees of track temp or a 30-degree rotation in the wind put you out of balance, it’s no surprise that the simulator was struggling to capture all of those effects.”

Asked how big a problem the correlation problem proved to be for Mercedes, Shovlin replied: “It’s definitely a big factor, because that is where you develop cars these days, by and large.

“It’s a lot easier when you’re racing all the time and you’ve got data coming in to say, to confirm that the things you’re doing are actually making the car go quicker, which we can look at where we’re finishing, the gap to pole, and that’s matching what we’re finding on the sim, which is genuinely adding performance.

“It’s difficult over a winter when you haven’t got that check of how do you stack up against the competition. But as I said, that was an area that was difficult early in the year. It does seem to be in the right direction now.”

Mercedes are optimistic they have now made a breakthrough with their W15 challenger.

“We’ve definitely found development directions that have made us quicker, as does every team. The question is are you developing as quick as the others?

“When we had a car that inherently didn’t want to balance, you couldn’t get it working well around all the corners on a circuit, then it is just a difficult thing to deal with. Far beyond the correlation, we now have a car that works on high speed, low speed, mid speed, and braking’s OK.

“There’s always areas to improve, and you’ll always be chasing someone, or you certainly are most of the time. But it does seem to be that the improvements to the car are the thing that have also helped in that correlation exercise.”