Bad news for Hamilton: Mercedes admit current upgrades are "blunt"

At the Miami Grand Prix, Mercedes did not excel, given their race record. With Lewis Hamilton sixth and George Russell eighth in the Grand Prix, and a sprint race that will hopefully soon be forgotten, the question arises whether the updates were effective for the team.

Updates work, but they are not yet beneficial

Mercedes received their first updates of the year in Miami. With the next set of updates ready for the Imola Grand Prix, the question is whether the first updates have been effective. In a debrief on the Mercedes YouTube channel, Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director at Mercedes, shares more about these updates.

"Yes, it all looks like it is delivering the performance that we were hoping for from the floor," Shovlin says. "The issue at the moment is that everyone else is developing their cars, you saw McLaren with a big package and they look to have moved forward."

In addition to competitor developments, Mercedes is also suffering from its own performance problems. "Also, the handling issues that the drivers are having to battle with are making it hard to really see all that performance as a straight step forward," Shovlin explained. "What we tend to find is that the car from session to session can behave quite differently, and until we get on top of that, we are always going to blunt the benefits that we can get from these types of updates."

The team does have hopes for the upcoming race in Imola. "After the last few races, we've got now a very clear idea of what we need to do to the car to get it handling a bit more easily for the drivers, making sure it goes where they want it to go when they are on those important qualifying laps, and we also have a good sort of thread of updates that will be coming over the next three or four races."

This article was written in collaboration with Sophia Crothall.