Mercedes will step up their upgrade programme over the coming races after making their best start to a season in four years.
The team lies second in the constructors’ championship, albeit already over 100 points behind leaders McLaren.
According to the FIA’s documentation, Mercedes brought their first upgrade of the season at the Miami Grand Prix last weekend. The team’s chief technical officer James Allison indicated there had been other changes to their car since the start of the year.
“We have actually been bringing upgrades,” he said in a video released by the team. “They’re not particularly sort of enormous or sexy, but they’ve been coming in a steady trickle.”
New parts may not be officially considered upgrades if they are built to the same design as previous parts but lightened. Allison did not confirm Mercedes have done this but indicated their coming upgrades will be easier to spot.
“There’s some that will be more obvious to the outside world in the next handful of races,” he said. “And with a bit of luck, they’ll improve our fortunes.
“But we’re a quarter of the way through the season already. It’s been coming at the teams hard and fast. It’s actually quite difficult to get upgrades to the car when the races are coming at you in this sort of machine-gun fashion.
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“So hopefully the ones that happen in the next two or three races will move the dial a bit for us and also as we will continue to try to work on the tyre temperature in the races, that will also improve our fortune.”
Allison said the team’s priority for the W16’s development is improving how it manages its tyre temperatures over a race distance, an area where McLaren has a clear advantage.
“Because we’ve been pretty strong in qualifying for the first several races, I think we can expect to have an okay shout of getting the car reasonably well up the grid in qualifying. With a bit of luck, the upgrades might make that a bit better still.
“But the main thing we’ll be focusing on is trying to get that race pace under control, trying to make sure that we deliver on the promise of our Saturdays on the Sunday. And that’s all about – or, the majority of it will be about – controlling the temperature of those tyres and making sure the car can therefore use the pace that’s in it.
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