Why the US GP will show the first clues to Mercedes' 2024 F1 steps

When Mercedes rolls out its modified floor at this weekend’s United States Grand Prix at Austin, the difference it brings in lap time will almost certainly not be a gamechanger in helping the squad knock Red Bull off the top - although you should never say never in Formula 1.

In fact, the team itself is in little doubt that it is nearing the end of the development curve with the W14 which, while much improved on how it started the season, is still nowhere near good enough to be consistently fighting at the front.

But while the tweaks to what is going on underneath the car should at least deliver a small step forward, there is a much bigger picture at play for the team right now. It’s all about laying the groundwork for the recovery that it must make for the start of 2024.

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Mercedes readily confesses that it missed the target with both its W13 and W14 as, for different reasons, they fell short. The W13 produced its peak downforce too low to the ground, which was an almost impossible area to consistently reach without Lewis Hamilton and George Russell being plagued by extreme bouncing.

In making amends for the errors it made with its 2022 car, and being especially nervous/conservative over porpoising, the team went too far the other way in targeting a car that ran too high from the ground. While rivals found gains running much lower, Mercedes was hamstrung from the off.

Much of this year has been spent seeking answers as to how it can better exploit the middle ground between the W13 and the W14 – especially because other teams like Red Bull and McLaren have appeared to unlock the elements that appear key to making the current generation of ground effect cars rapid.

Mercedes has been so far unable to unlock certain ground effect elements that have benefited McLaren and Red Bull

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Mercedes’ knowledge gathering has been impressive, and it has not been afraid to rip things up in its quest to better understand things. This was proven by the switch from its zeropods to a more Red Bull-style downwash solution from the Monaco GP. It was done not because the new sidepods were automatically better, but because it needed to take uncertainties about designs off the table.

But while early season developments left plenty of time to assess their impact and work on refining them, right now there is a much greater sense of urgency. As the season nears its end, we are in the weeks when things need to get nailed down for 2024.

And while it would be wrong to suggest that the Austin floor design will define a concept that decides if the W15 is a race winner or not, what is essential with it is that it delivers exactly what is intended and expected from the factory.

"It is mostly a useful thing because it's a bellwether for whether we're on the right track” James Allison

Irrespective of if it brings 0.03 seconds or 0.3 seconds, or anything in between, the critical thing for Mercedes is that it behaves exactly as anticipated – so it can prove that it has a handle on the car design dynamics.

If it does that, then the team will know that it is on the right track in finally gaining a foothold in what is needed to make a successful car for the current rules set.

As technical director James Allison said about the floor recently: “Hopefully it'll give us a bit of lap time, always a benefit. But it is mostly a useful thing because it's a bellwether for whether we're on the right track.”

Despite the team's difficulties, Hamilton is within touching distance of Sergio Perez in the battle for second in the drivers' standings

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

When you dig deep into the elements that have helped Red Bull deliver so much with the RB19, and McLaren make impressive gains with its MCL60, one of the key aspects is that their progress has come about because they have this holistic understanding of how the whole car works – and each part interacts with another. There is no one single part of the Red Bull that stands out as the things that defines its brilliance. The floor is great, but it is how it responds with the sidepods, floor edge, beam wing and main plane that makes the difference.

The same is true of McLaren. It has only been able to make such strong progress off the back of it ticking the box when it comes to perfectly understanding what gains are doing and how different parts of the car talk to each other. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella explained recently that the most critical aspect to his squad’s turnaround was the complete correlation between the development tools at the factory and what was happening at the race track.

“You work on development tools for five or six months, so you need to be able to trust what you're doing,” he said. “Otherwise, you deliver the car, then the car does something else, and you have wasted so much effort. That's why you hear engineers being so focused on 'correlates with the expectation'. And there is almost a capitalisation – that [in it not being] wasted efforts, I think that in turn generates even more energy, motivation, determination.”

It’s this as perfect as can be correlation that Mercedes will be wanting to see in Austin, especially with it knowing that there is really not time for it to make any misstep with its 2024 car. The wholesale rule changes coming for 2026 mean that time will be short to unleash any major revamps.

As Allison said: “It's important that we get off the new season on the front foot, but more than averagely so because, with 2026 bearing down on us, and a car that will need to be engineered in 2025, it's highly likely that the 2025 cars can be close cousins of the 2024 cars. So doubly important to get the 2024 car good.”

This then is why Hamilton has talked of Mercedes needing the best six months of car development that it has ever had in its history. And there would be no better way to prepare for that slog ahead than it ticking off all it needs with its floor this weekend.

Although Mercedes has dropped its zero-pod philosophy, there is no longer time for such a large change before the 2026 regulations land

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images

When the W15 hits the track for Bahrain pre-season testing next year, the team will know if the answers it got now have helped it unleash a winner, or if it is going to face more troubles ahead. As Allison admitted, while teams constantly play down the performance potential of cars when they first run, deep down they know what they have created.

“I think that over the years, most of the good cars that I've been lucky enough to be around while they've happened, the driver gets in and doesn't exactly say ‘spend your bonus’, but they more or less do,” he said. “Unlocking potential is not really something that takes very long if the car is well born. And that will be the aim of this one.”

The first clues of Mercedes’ newborn are coming this weekend.

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Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images