Why Spa can reveal the most about Mercedes’ powers of resurrection

Attempting to savour the final days before travelling to Spa, perhaps Toto Wolff tuned into Monday Night Football earlier this week. After all, the boss of eight-time Formula 1 constructors’ champion Mercedes has something of an appreciation for Manchester United, the Austrian having revealed he used the club as a case study to understand why great teams decline. If he did watch, Wolff will have seen the Red Devils triumph over Liverpool chiefly by outworking their fierce rivals.

The work ethic of his own Silver Arrows squad is without question, and has garnered constant praise from drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes having zero need to bench its talismanic 37-year-old…). Only it will have taken the grand prix team far longer to have escaped the doldrums to taste victory this season, should it even get there. Nevertheless, events in Belgium can offer the greatest read of just how extreme the ground-effect recovery has been.

In the 21 weeks between the heavily revised W13 machine making its public debut during the pre-season test at Bahrain and the chequered flag of the Hungarian GP, there were only seven weekends without a race. Add in a hectic travel schedule and there were precious few days that could be solely dedicated to breaking down the data to troubleshoot a difficult car that was porpoising violently.

Despite the punishingly tight calendar, Mercedes clearly took steps forward in unlocking the initially recalcitrant W13 to sign off for the summer with a 2-3 result in Hungary. But there’s still been a lingering issue with Mercedes truly knowing what makes the machine tick right out of the box.

For instance, when the drivers were sent out for practice at Budapest, they were hovering on the fringes of the top 10. That forced the mechanics to turn the cars “upside down”, per Russell, for him to score pole. The headline result was stellar, but it was born out of sheer inconsistency.

Russell took pole in Hungary, but only after the car was totally revamped due to Friday struggles

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

That’s why a trip to Spa can shed light on the current state of play. Should Mercedes deliver pace straight away on Friday and carry it through the rest of the weekend, it will reveal whether a deep dive through the numbers has enabled the team to fully understand what makes the W13 tick, instead of reverting to the massive peaks and troughs it can endure each weekend.

After the nadir of Canada where, according to the ‘Supertimes’ metric, Mercedes had only the sixth-fastest car, Spa could mark the fifth race in succession where it is at least in the top three. That would be a sure-fire indication of the extent and permanence of the gains.

If Mercedes is within the limits of the technical directive and can therefore maintain its speed, the team can be determined to have made real progress in refining the W13

As trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin puts it: “From a development path, the early part of the season was enormously distracting. You're having to put more and more of your aerodynamicists into understanding the sort of 'bouncenomics' of the problem.

“Gradually, we've been getting that resource back into this sort of bread-and-butter aero development. We would say cautiously now, perhaps we've gone from tiptoeing to taking bigger strides.”

There might also be a very clear representation of how far Mercedes has come in six months. Keen to watch this new breed of ground-effect machinery in action, Autosport spent several hours trackside during Barcelona testing. It was striking how much the W13 was porpoising. The car was rising and then pounding back into the asphalt well before the braking zone into Turn 1, when the speedometer was nudging 172mph.

The Spanish straight is a little over 1050metres long. By comparison, the flat-out rollercoaster from the exit of La Source to when the drivers are slamming on the anchors at the end of the Kemmel Straight is almost twice that, and they’ll be carrying another 25mph or so. If the W13 can keep it composure in these quicker conditions, the progress will be clear. If it can’t, and the car starts the run of nine races to the end of the campaign pogoing as before, then it will likely fall foul of TD039.

The Kemmel Straight at Spa is far longer than the main straight at the Circuit de Catalunya, so will be an important test

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Finally, after it was first announced at Montreal, the new technical directive comes into force for Spa, whereby the FIA will be recording the vertical forces acting on the cars. This comes after Wolff explained that frequencies of one or two hertz over several minutes can lead to long-term brain damage.

Currently in F1, as a result of porpoising, he reckons: “We have six to seven hertz over several hours. The FIA has just no option than to do something. It's a medical question that needs to be answered…The FIA says it doesn't want to have an NFL situation.”

As such, Mercedes – which has at points had the rear suspension raised as high as it will go – and all other teams must comply or be forced into radical and detrimental set-up compromises. If the three-pointed star is within the limit and can therefore maintain its speed, the team can be determined to have made real progress in refining the W13.

Should the Belgian GP not fall victim to the capricious weather this year, the Silver Arrows should be able to show the full extent of its phoenix-like revival. Based on that, Mercedes could stand a very real and somewhat remarkable chance of pipping Ferrari for second in the constructors’ as a sign of how far it has come.

Mercedes will hope its recent upswing in form is borne out at Spa following the summer break

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images