The three performance-boosting factors that surprised Mercedes in Las Vegas

Millions upon millions of pounds are invested into the design and development of Formula 1 cars. They're highly-specialised machines, but must also be terrific generalists and perform at a consistent level in all sorts of conditions - high downforce, low downforce, dry, and wet weather. And, as the calendar continues to expand against its more manageable scope from 10-20 years ago, there's an even greater variance in climates and circumstances. 

But can they do it on a cold Saturday night in Las Vegas? Ever since winter testing at Barcelona was discontinued in favour of warmer, wealthier ambiances, the modern machines seldom get opportunities to run on sub-20C asphalt. Add to that the idiosyncrasies of a street circuit, and one can understand the challenges presented by the Vegas circuit. 

PLUS: Las Vegas Grand Prix Driver Ratings 2024

These elements were neatly wrapped up in a pretty bow and posted to Mercedes, which revelled in the competitive streak that had also yielded some surprise. But, and as discussed in our analysis of the grand prix, Brackley's finest still had to work for it to stay on top of the pecking order. 

Given the capriciousness of this year's W15, a car with the same consistency of sunshine in a British summer, it's not entirely surprising that it hit the crest of a wave a few weeks after some very iffy performances across the board. Just as Lewis Hamilton thought all was lost after Brazil, holding onto the modest hope of a car that wouldn't throw him off the road in the final three races, he received far more than he had expected.

So what's the behind the sudden turnaround, and why did Mercedes look so strong when others struggled to get their claws into the unique conditions of Nevada's most populous city? There's three key elements here and, without any one of them, the Silver Arrows might have endured a little more fear and loathing in Las Vegas...

In the cool temperatures of the Las Vegas night, Mercedes topped every session

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

1. Cool temperatures mitigate Mercedes' tyre overheating issues

This is the more immediate one that the figures in the team point to, simply because it's the most accessible conclusion. Here's how Mercedes' performances correlate to the weather: the hotter it is, the more the tyres degrade and therefore, the worse the races are. It's a self-fulfilling feedback loop, which surely has the possibility to go the other way when the temperatures drop.

But it's a little bit more nuanced than that. There's also the effect of downforce on the tyres; running more wing ensures that the cars slide less as there's a greater contact patch for the interface with the track, and so you end up stopping the tyre surface from generating inconsistent hotspots and graining. But, if you're borderline on overheating, running that extra downforce can build a surplus of heat if a driver isn't careful - particularly in hotter temperatures, which can yield blistering if the carcass is overworked. It's a fine balancing act.

At a cool 17C track temperature, this was less of a worry for Mercedes. Even though Las Vegas has a massive straight, Mercedes chose to be a little more cautious with wing levels compared to the likes of Alpine and Ferrari, which ran more extreme variants of their suite of low-drag aerodynamics. Per the race speed trap figures, this didn't seem to hurt the car too much; Hamilton was atop this order with a 350.5kph peak (217.8mph) with DRS assistance, but perhaps losing a tiny bit of speed to manage the tyres a bit more is a sensible situation when it's difficult to get the tyres heated up. Mercedes could implement this without such a heavy cost late in the race.

The W15 is innately good at generating tyre temperatures, which partly explains why it frequently deals with a low-grip scenario in FP1 well. When the track grips up over a weekend, the advantage starts to slide, and set-up changes to move in the direction of the track evolution have tended to make the car slightly more awkward to handle. Take the downforce off, the car slides more, and the drivers are unhappy. Tack it on, and the tyres overheat and the drivers are unhappy. It's a narrow window for the car to work in, a situation to which Hamilton seems to be more sensitive. 

"On tracks like this where it's relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, and we fly" George Russell 

"It's cold. I think that clearly, you can correlate where we've been strong: we've been strong in Silverstone, we've been strong in Spa, and then here in Las Vegas," said team principal Toto Wolff. "And I think it's just keeping the car in its sweet spot, the tyres in the optimum window.

"Clearly, it shows that the car can be very, very quick. I mean, we were two seconds quicker than our competition at times, when George was pushing. And for the rest of the day, he was just managing his pace."

Case in point: in qualifying, George Russell didn't have the time to take a build lap in the latter phases of Q3, as his car was being given the once-over after clipping the wall on his opening run. He didn't need one to take pole; the car had generated enough temperature on the out-lap.

The smooth surface played to Mercedes' strengths, allowing the W15 to be run within its favourable working window

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

2. Smooth circuit reduces ride height compromises

When the 2022 regulations came out, most engineers suspected that the cars would be at their best when run at an obscenely low ride height. The early cars in the current ruleset were designed around that, with stiff suspension employed to maintain a consistent height from the ground in order to extract downforce in the high-speed corners. But this induces two problems.

The first is the coupling effect between the car under load and the suspension. This opens the car up to the threat of porpoising and bouncing, the latter of which has been a consistent problem with Mercedes' lineage of cars over the past three years. There's a difference; the former is a result of the coupled aero platform inducing a heave motion (for which there are two schools of thought: the common stall-and-reload explanation, and a harmonic motion explanation), and the latter is the physical interface between the floor and the road. 

When the track is bumpy, the ride gets harsher. With a suspension package that cannot deliver the damping under load, the floor tends to strike the track and continue to bounce until the load comes off at lower speeds. Mercedes dearly wants to run its cars at the lowest setting it can, because it knows that's where the performance is. But it has skirted too closely to the drawbacks, particularly when it comes to the faster, bumpier tracks.

Las Vegas is a lot smoother - not quite to the same degree as the billiard table of Silverstone, but there's relatively little variance in the road surface profile. That means that Mercedes can keep the car low, build up the downforce in the faster sections of the course, and shed less of it in the angular low-speed turns.

"It's no secret that we struggle on the bumpy circuits, and we have to lift the car quite a lot," Russell explained after his victory. 

ANALYSIS: Seven things we learned from the 2024 Las Vegas Grand Prix

"We've got to make it much softer. And then we're in a downforce window where we don't have any. And it's not that we just suddenly forget how to set the car up. It's just certain circuits require us to put the car in a window it doesn't like to be. 

"And on tracks like this where it's relatively smooth, we can get the car quite low, quite stiff, with little or no bumps around the track, and we fly."

Playing it smart with the timing of pitstops was key to pushing Hamilton up through the order

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

3. Smart strategy and sensible driving unlocked a 1-2 finish

It's time for the old racing driver default phrase: "maximising the potential". It's an oft-glib phrase, a counterpart to football's "we put it all out there" but in a typically more techie, jargon-heavy way befitting of F1's nature. Yet, it was the motorsport equivalent to Nirvana that Mercedes reached in Las Vegas; it saw the potential from the practice sessions on Thursday and Friday, and delivered upon it.

Russell managed this on track. He knew that a good lap was in the bag across qualifying, and simply had to reach in and pluck it out. He did that. He knew that he could defend from Charles Leclerc's early onslaught, while bringing the tyres in slowly to last longer. He did that. And, lastly, he knew he could win if he kept a consistent pace and did not stress the tyres too much in unnecessary shows of bravado. He did that.

A messy qualifying gave Hamilton more work to do on the day, but he converted 10th on the grid into the "2" component of a Mercedes 1-2 through a canny drive and through leaning on the strategy. Getting the passes done through the lower reaches of the top 10 ensured that he kept within touching distance of the top five drivers, and crucially pulled them off with low-risk moves that scarcely took life out of his tyres.

Even if it can't build a car with the desired consistency in all conditions, its race team is as sharp as it was in its halcyon days

The timing of his first pit call, which conferred upon him a reasonable tyre offset versus the cars ahead of him, ensured that he had a bit more to play with. Once he'd sized up Norris, Hamilton could effectively perform a stakeout on the Ferrari duo and wait for them to suffer the deleterious effects of graining; Leclerc and Carlos Sainz were running at very low downforce and were perhaps guilty of pushing too hard at the start of their stints while the tyres weren't really up to temperature. By undercutting them in the second stops, Hamilton left his old hard tyres far before they'd gone beyond their peak and could focus on getting his new white-walled Pirellis up to standard.

Sainz, who was in a mire of graining issues at this juncture, could not return to the track ahead of Hamilton; nor could Leclerc. The seas parted, and Verstappen was also an easy pass owing to the Red Bull's reduced efficiency on the back straight.

It was a case of Mercedes not necessarily knowing the score with why it was so good in Las Vegas, but nonetheless reading the situational elements well and judging them accordingly. Even if it can't build a car with the desired consistency in all conditions, its race team is as sharp as it was in its halcyon days - which were admittedly only a few years ago. 

Mercedes hasn't forgotten how to win, but understanding what caused the W15 to fly could be a flex for 2025

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images