Mercedes reveal 'difficult question' after latest W15 upgrade

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has highlighted a "difficult question" about the W15 it must establish an answer for.

As stated by the 50-year-old, the team needs to understand whether that is anything "handling characteristics" its recent upgrade package is doing that the Brackley-based squad had not predicted.

Shovlin confirmed the upgrade, originally introduced at Spa-Francorchamps before ultimately being sidelined until Zandvoort, was delivering the expected levels of load for the car.

"Over the last three races, we’ve done various compares of the packages and principally comparing the floor, and what we are confident in is that it’s generating the load that we expect," he explained.

"How do we know that? We’re measuring the forces that it generates on the road through the suspension.

"We are also looking at the pressures that are generated across the car, and we can correlate that with what we’re seeing in the wind tunnel, and that allows us to get a pretty decent read on whether it’s doing what we expect.

"It’s important to note this was not a very large gain that we were expecting, it was quite a small package that we introduced, but we’re confident that it is generating that load.

"The more difficult question that we need to answer is: Is there anything subtle in the handling characteristics that this package might be doing that we haven’t anticipated?"

After Mercedes shelved the package during the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, the performance of the W15 improved.

Despite George Russell's disqualification, Lewis Hamilton inherited victory for the team - its third in four races and second on merit.

However, when the update was re-introduced in the Netherlands, Mercedes again struggled, unable to live with the front-running pace of Max Verstappen and the McLarens - or the Ferraris during the race.

Hamilton failed to reach Q3 in qualifying and despite his strong race pace, Russell dropped back on the Sunday from his fourth-place grid slot. The pair finished eighth and seventh, respectively.

At the Italian Grand Prix, it had the edge over Red Bull, but was again behind the Ferraris and McLarens on outright pace on what was a relatively closely matched weekend for the top for teams.

Shovlin explained the difference profiles of Spa-Francorchamps, Zandvoort and Monza has provided problems in getting an accurate read on the handling characteristics - something the team hopes to establish in ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

"That’s quite difficult to assess, because the car will perform differently track-to-track, some tracks it’s been working very well," he said.

"Other circuits we’ve struggled with the balance of the car regardless of the aerodynamic spec, and yes, the last two races haven’t been as good as some of the one’s that preceded it.

"It may well be that’s just the normal variation from track-to-track, but that’s what we’re going to be looking at over the next few days, and on top of that there are other updates that we’re bringing into the system.

"There’s quite a lot for us to consider, but we do have a lot of data now, and we can go off and use the next few days to learn what we can from that."