What the numbers reveal about Mercedes upgrades
They may now be the best of the rest but jury is still out on whether changes will push team closer to Red Bull
At the Spanish Grand Prix, the upgraded Mercedes W14 had its first serious test on a circuit that could offer a clue as to the team’s hopes for the rest of the season.
If a car goes well at the Circuit de Barcelona-catalunya, it is likely to go well at most tracks. Sunday’s double podium and 33-point haul was by far the team’s best performance of another difficult season and Lewis Hamilton was more upbeat than he has been all year.
Yet it is easy to get carried away by the enthusiasm. The same team left the circuit a year ago after an improved performance even more buoyant than they were on Sunday, but that counted for little in the end.
To attempt to work out how strong their showing was in Spain, we must make meaningful comparisons with the rest of their season, and with last year.
What the qualifying numbers say
Mercedes have improved in absolute terms compared to 2022 when it comes to qualifying. In relative terms, the presence of Aston Martin and Ferrari has complicated their place in the pecking order. However, the results last weekend were not much of a leap forward. Mercedes were again, as in Monaco, the fifth-fastest team over one lap, this time behind Red Bull, Mclaren, Ferrari and Alpine.
Drilling down into that further, in Spain last year Mercedes were 0.817 per cent slower than the fastest Red Bull. This year, they were 0.755 per cent slower. That showing in 2022 was a big leap, being their second-best qualifying of a perplexing opening 10 rounds.
Last weekend was a slight improvement on their overall 2022 average, but if you compare it to their 2023 figure before the upgraded W14, the result was almost bang on their season average: 0.755 per cent off the fastest time in Spain against 0.745 for the first five rounds.
Monaco is less relevant because of its unique layout but was actually slightly better (0.504 per cent off pole) and that was also with the upgraded car. But neither qualifying session in the past two rounds was their best of the year.
There are caveats in that George
Russell struggled in qualifying with bouncing and a lack of tyre warmup and Hamilton failed to extract the maximum from the car, too.
Had the seven-time world champion put his best three sectors together, his lap time would have been good enough for the front row, around 0.3sec off Max Verstappen’s pole time.
What the race numbers say
Since the post-2021 regulations were brought in, the Mercedes has been a far better race car than a qualifier, with the team’s persistent struggles at getting the tyres in the right window hampering them on Saturday.
Heading into the weekend, the average gap between the race winner (a Red Bull every round so far) and the leading Mercedes was 39 seconds, excluding the Australian Grand Prix, which finished under a safety car. That is nearly two pit stops of time at most tracks and amounts to, on average, almost 0.6sec per lap.
On Sunday, the 24.090 sec between Verstappen and runnerup
Hamilton was Mercedes’s smallest margin of defeat this year. It is close to the 25.866sec margin in Saudi Arabia but that flattered Mercedes as the race resumed on lap 20 after a safety car.
But was the 24-second gap representative of the running on Sunday? “I think it was less, Lewis was cruising at the end … probably it’s just sub-15 seconds,” Toto Wolff, the team principal, said.
There is some merit in the Austrian’s claim. Hamilton lost 4.1sec on the final two laps (when he knew second was secure) so, perhaps, the real gap is more like 20 seconds. That is around 0.3sec per lap or roughly half of their average race lap-time deficit in 2023.
George Russell’s run to third from 12th on the grid should also be taken into account. Especially because Sergio Perez in the second Red Bull started ahead of him, finished behind him and was giving it his all to catch him at the end.
After Russell broke into the top four on lap 14 he lost only 11.5 sec to Verstappen in the following 45 laps, or around 0.25sec per lap. That is still a hefty gap, though. Of course, Verstappen would not have been flat out for the entire 66 laps given how far ahead he was.
How optimistic should Mercedes be?
This was definitely Mercedes’ best race compared to Red Bull, and that is the benchmark they should be using. But their battle now is with Ferrari and Aston Martin. The former had a strange weekend, with only one of their cars ever in the reckoning, and the latter had their worst weekend of the year, both drivers finishing more than a minute behind the winner.
Mercedes were, for the first time, comfortably the best of the rest behind Red Bull. Will that continue? The Barcelona track is a good bellwether for a car, but each track has its own characteristics. Was this uptick because of the upgrades, anomalous, or cooler conditions flattering the car? It is too soon to tell if this is the start of Mercedes breaking clear of those around them, let alone closing down the gap to Red Bull. Aston Martin and Ferrari lagging behind could become a trend, but we will have a better idea in a few races.
The fact there is already more room for improvement, that the upgraded W14 will set a new “baseline”, according to the team, means that closing the gap to the leaders is possible. The aerodynamic development advantage they have over Red Bull will also help. But it is such a monumental gap to close that even if – a big if – they nail their inseason development, they will still be out of touch come Abu Dhabi.
The biggest reason to be cautious is that Mercedes have frequently failed to understand why their car is quick when it is quick as much as why it is bad when it is bad. And do not forget the numerous false dawns last year. Even after a rare win in Brazil, the team slipped well back behind even Ferrari in the final race of the year. It is a big leap to become contenders again, but Mercedes are only going to get there with steps in the right direction, and this was certainly that.