Team to Bring Upgrades to Miami Grand Prix

Following a challenging Chinese Grand Prix, Mercedes is set to introduce significant car upgrades at the upcoming Miami Grand Prix, aiming for a stronger performance.

The Mercedes Formula 1 team encountered considerable hurdles at the recent Chinese Grand Prix. In an attempt to boost performance, the team altered their car setup after the Sprint race, but this backfired dramatically, resulting in Lewis Hamilton tumbling from a promising second place in the Sprint to an 18th place in qualifying, although he managed a recovery to ninth in the race.

James Allison, Mercedes’ Technical Director, reflected on the lessons learned from this ordeal, stating in the team’s debrief video:

“Every weekend you go to, you learn things.

“It’s one of the truisms of F1, it is a learning race and although you have a factory full of tools, you have a load of computational power, a load of people who are thinking about it, there is no place to learn about the car better than with the car at the track doing what it’s designed to do.”

Allison also emphasized the different challenges presented by the Miami Grand Prix track, noting its contrast with Shanghai’s front-limited circuit. He continued:

“We head from China, one of the most famously front-limited circuits to Miami, a track that is more in the rear-limited end of the spectrum and our challenge will be to make sure we don’t try and replay China at a Miami that is a very, very different beast and wants different things from the car than China will.”

In preparation for Miami, Mercedes plans to apply a more experimental approach during the Sprint to pinpoint the optimal settings for the main race.

“We face the enjoyment of another sprint weekend with this second go of having two bites of the cherry and we definitely learnt during this weekend that if you’re going to be ambitious, be ambitious in the sprint race and then tune it down for the main race rather than the opposite way around.

“Hopefully we’ll land a car in a better place, that the upgrades that we’re going to bring to Miami serve us well in a grid that in qualifying at least is really close, around the part of the battle we’re fighting a few hundredths can make a difference sometimes and a couple of tenths would make all the difference in the world. 

“So looking forward to seeing how that all plays out.”

Allison also confirmed that the team is bringing upgrades to the race at the Hard Rock Stadium, commenting:

“That’s of course the challenge that we face in the coming races is to try and move both the setup of the car and also the pieces that we bring to the car so that that’s improved.

“We’ve got upgrade packages coming to the car but also components that we hope will rectify the underlying balance that is causing us difficulty.

“Much as it’s painful to talk in this way after a weekend like this, I just have to remember that there’ll be races in the future when we’ve executed those things, when we’re back more on the front foot and when we’re progressing where the pleasure of talking about it will be massive and that day can’t come soon enough.”

With the 2024 regulation changes allowing more freedom in car setups between Sprint and the Grand Prix, teams like Mercedes are adapting their strategies to leverage these new opportunities effectively.