Two of Mercedes’ Formula 1 customers have now made the kind of substantial jump up the pecking order that the Mercedes works team can only dream of right now.
So why is a similar feat such a “stretch target” – in its own words – for Mercedes?
Aston Martin’s season-to-season gains were such that it has become Mercedes’ closest rival for second in the constructors’ championship in 2023, despite having scored 460 points fewer than its supplier last season, while McLaren was the second-fastest team at Silverstone last time out thanks to a multi-step upgrade, half of which debuted on Lando Norris’s car one week earlier at the Red Bull Ring.
It will be tough for McLaren to maintain that status at the Hungaroring this weekend given the circuit characteristics are expected to still highlight its weak points – although it ended Friday in much encouraging shape than it had predicted. Regardless of this weekend, it’s been able to make a sizeable leap in performance with a single upgrade package in much the same way that Aston Martin took that big step over the winter.
So why hasn’t Mercedes been able to achieve that kind of in-season leap and can it at some point this year?
“Anything is possible [but] I don’t think we have planned that sort of leap,” Lewis Hamilton replied when The Race asked him if such a feat was possible for Mercedes in-season.
When The Race put the same question to Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin he replied: “It’s encouraging because we know the engines are doing a good job in those cars.
“We’re working hard to try and move forward. The step McLaren has made is pretty impressive, you can see they’ve changed a fair bit on their car.
“But for us we do need to close that gap to Red Bull. We’re still developing the car, whether or not we can find the half a second that they look to have found I don’t know, that will be a stretch target.”
McLaren’s performance at Silverstone should have provided Mercedes with a “wake-up call”, according to Hamilton, while Mercedes technical director James Allison believes the team should take special notice of what McLaren has been able to achieve.
“The interesting and unusual thing about the McLaren upgrade is that its laptime effect is quite strong,” Allison said.
“It’s well worth us paying more attention than we normally might to another competitor team’s upgrade.”
While there were original innovations, McLaren pivoted the concept of its MCL60 far closer to Red Bull’s all-conquering RB19. Mercedes has already trialled designs that closely resemble the RB19’s concept and bodywork but didn’t pursue them because of the downforce loss it found.
“We had the sidepod concept and the bodywork in the windtunnel very early on already,” Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff explained. “And the relative loss of downforce was substantial.”
But Wolff has since hinted that Mercedes may revisit such a path considering the performance gains McLaren has found with it.
“You’ve got to leave no stone unturned and maybe look at it again because another team just found a second in performance,” he said.
There are of course mitigating factors in Mercedes’ relative lack of development success versus its customers. Namely, the fact its windtunnel and CFD allowance under F1’s ATR (aerodynamic testing restrictions) regulations continues to be lower than Aston Martin’s and McLaren’s.
That’s important because for the teams all trying to catch Red Bull, because lower ATR amounts mean less opportunity to trial concepts that might help catch the champion team, especially within a cost cap era where endless trial and error just isn’t possible anymore.
“You’re very limited to resources so you have to be careful with what decisions you make,” Hamilton said.
“If you go full steam in this direction you could lose weeks of development, tenths of performance so you have to be very methodical with the way they go through that process.
“I wish it was faster but unfortunately it’s not.”
This year Mercedes brought a visually striking package to Monaco at the end of May with changes to the front suspension and major revisions to its bodywork and floor, before bringing a new front wing to Silverstone six weeks later.
That front wing “worked as expected” according to Allison and will “hopefully bring us more [performance] at tracks which have a wider range of slow corners”, so the Hungaroring should provide a sterner test of its merits this weekend.
George Russell – on pole at the Hungaroring last year – believes Mercedes is closing the gap to Red Bull and targeted race wins alongside second in the championship this year.
“At some races, they [Red Bull] were 30 seconds ahead, last week, they were three seconds ahead, albeit with the safety car, but they weren’t running away with things,” Russell said.
“So, we are closing that gap. It seems like the whole field is slightly more compact, which makes it exciting. And the small details make a big difference.
“We’re focused, we’ve got P2 in the constructors’ championship in our sights, and what we’re aiming for, but we’re still pushing for more, and [will] try and get some race wins along the way.”
Of course, any gains Mercedes makes will likely have a lower ceiling than what was available to Aston Martin prior to 2023 and McLaren prior to the Austrian GP. Both Aston Martin and McLaren were coming from further back in the pecking order than Mercedes has been at any stage of F1’s new era.
But Mercedes is still optimistic that it can make some gains within the 2023 season and become consistently the second-fastest team behind Red Bull.
For now there are just a “few small steps” coming to the W14 according to Wolff but that group behind Red Bull is so tight that a couple of tenths could make all of the difference.
Some of the upgrades will aid Mercedes’ 2024 car but inevitably the pace of developments for this year’s car will slow down as the team’s focus shifts to next year’s design.
Allison described that as something that will “defang all of us a little bit” in the fight for second, with that prize ultimately paling in comparison to a potential 2024 title challenge if any of the teams behind Red Bull made big enough gains with next year’s cars.
“We have no choice. It’s about being able to win a world championship. That’s not going to happen this year,” Wolff said.
After all, making an immediate step forward in 2023 would really mean far less to Mercedes than gaining lessons and making the right decisions that would allow it to have a title-challenging car in 2024.
That’s the real priority goal for the rest of 2023; not finishing in second place, not even trying desperately to replicate McLaren’s in-season leap, but to make sure it finally starts next year in the place it’s been tirelessly trying – and failing – to get to for the last year and a half.
Keyword: Where Mercedes can’t match its improving F1 customers