TECH DEBRIEF: Mercedes’ performance faded despite Spa upgrades
Despite to two performance upgrades last time out at last weekend's Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes failed to deliver a strong performance at Spa-Francorchamps. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo delivers his latest analysis.
Mercedes endured a tough weekend at the Belgian Grand Prix. George Russell endured an early exit in sprint qualifying, and was unable to make any real progress, ending the 100km dash pointless.
The Briton then went on to qualify in a distant sixth place on Saturday before making little progress in the race to finish fifth, more than half a minute down on race winner Oscar Piastri.
His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli suffered a shock SQ1/Q1 exit in the sprint and the standard qualifying session.
Although the Italian looked fairly competitive on damp surface, he was unable to make huge progress, and a tactical move to pit for a second time backfired, and saw Antonelli wound up outside the points in 16th.
The disappointeing result came on a weekend when Mercedes introduced two performance upgrades.
The Brackley-based outfit brought a revised front wing to Spa-Francorchamps. The new wing featured a modified endplate with an increased chord on the second element.
The team noted that “increasing the chord on the front wing second element local to the endplate (and reducing the forward element chord), redistributes the tip vorticity and improves tyre squirt and lower wake control.”
Additionally, Mercedes has also tweaked the rear corner, moving the “drum lip” inboard to reduce turbulence around the rear tyres.
“Moving the drum lip inboard increases vorticity shed off the top edge resulting in more outwash and improved rear tyre upper wake control,” Mercedes commented.
