Mercedes’ new Formula 1 upgrade, soundly beaten by its old spec in sprint qualifying at the Singapore Grand Prix, has exposed a fundamental weakness in the latest package.
George Russell qualified second for the Singapore sprint race in the old Mercedes, 0.573 seconds faster than teammate Kimi Antonelli, who is using the upgrade the team debuted in Malaysia last week.
The team had approached the Marina Bay weekend opting to split the packages among its drivers in a bid to get a quick answer as to why its performance at the Bahrain Grand Prix a week ago had been so poor.
This experience provided answers from day one, knowing that there are fundamental characteristic differences between the two cars.
And in particular, the latest upgrade in Antonelli’s hands turned out to have a narrow balance window – so it switches between understeer and oversteer very quickly, making it difficult for the driver to have confidence.
Additionally, this feature causes the tires to slip more than is ideal, which has a noticeable impact on qualifying performance.
While this feature is now clear, what Mercedes doesn’t understand is why this is happening and whether it is related to new developments leading to a narrow tuning window or whether it simply hasn’t figured out how to make the most of it.
Mercedes’ director of track engineering, Andrew Shovlin, admitted that sprint qualifying “left us a bit struggling to understand why the update doesn’t deliver the performance step we expect.”
“Neither car had good balance, although Kimi lacked confidence during braking and entry phases, and that’s what you need to attack a qualifying lap here.
“We will continue to work to understand why this is the case. We have a lot of data around us to try to progress, and hopefully we can put Kimi’s car in a better position for the main qualifying tomorrow.
Mercedes is well aware that it needs quick answers regarding its improvements, as it needs to have confidence that the design directions it has taken are working as it accelerates its efforts on its 2027 challenger.
Team boss Toto Wolff was unsure what the team could agree on in the longer term, but The Race understands that Mercedes will stick with Antonelli to run the latest spec for the remainder of the Singapore weekend despite Friday’s performance, as answers matter more than immediate performance.
“There is a pattern, but the most important thing is to really dissect what works and what doesn’t in the old and new specifications, then find a path forward by selecting the best elements and seeing where the direction of development should take us in order to extract the optimal lap time,” Wolff said.
And what model is he referring to?
“The new car seems to be a little trickier to drive,” he added. “I’m not saying it’s necessarily slower because there will be some good in it, but maybe we haven’t just found a way to put it all together and fix it.
“The older car is a little bit stable, grippy, but it’s really just a little bit… it’s a data point, it’s a free practice session, and it’s going to need more time to get more conclusive information.”
Gary Anderson’s verdict
Mercedes left Malaysia with a lot of questions about its performance, and I agree that it wasn’t what it should be. In my analysis of its developments for this run I ended with the following comments.
The big question is: Will Mercedes achieve the expected improvement of 0.3 seconds per lap?
From the outside, it is always difficult to quantify any level of improvement. Based on her performance so far this year, if she doesn’t lock down the front row in qualifying and finish first and second in the race, we can assume Mercedes hasn’t lived up to those expectations.
Over the weekend I didn’t see that 0.3 second improvement, so I’m sure there was a bit of a headache.
What Wolff said after free testing in Singapore seems to suggest that this is continuing, given that he raised the possibility of having to select the best elements of the upgrade for the future direction.
Antonelli confirmed this after qualifying, saying: “The car is very difficult, very unpredictable and very difficult to complete a lap.”
However, its development continues. For Singapore, Mercedes tested a new front wing with a two-element straight mode rather than the previous version with a single moving element. As it is a bolt-on component, both cars tried it in FP1 and IMHO it is one of the areas I would have looked at.
Its original version was mounted on the central element (green shading and arrows). This potentially had three advantages.
Firstly, it meant that the FIA deflection tests were probably a little easier to pass.
Second, any deflection due to the actual induced aerodynamic load would be more uniform, giving a more stable center of pressure.
Three, because of one and two, overall it should be lighter.
As we can see, the overall string length of the assembly (yellow arrow) on both versions is very similar. However, the chord length of the rear flap (cyan arrow) is now shorter, meaning that when the assembly switches from straight line mode to cornering mode, the airflow, aided by the position of this split space between the two elements, will reattach to this new assembly more quickly and with more consistency.
With the original version, if the airflow from the rear wing was having trouble getting back into place, then slowing down the front wing in place would mean the car wouldn’t be so twitchy when cornering. But to achieve this, it would mean that for a few hundredths of a second at the entrance to the corner, the maximum overall grip would not be available and it would not necessarily be very constant.
Mercedes said this was just a test item they wanted to validate, so it was removed after FP1, with both drivers using the original specification.
Gn sports
