MPH: Mercedes upgrade points to a bigger fight at US Grand Prix

F1

With inferior car design concepts, the F1 pack chasing Red Bull have been limited in performance all year, says Mark Hughes. But as Mercedes unveils a big upgrade, there are predictions of an intense battle with Ferrari and McLaren at Circuit of the Americas

Max Verstappen leads Lewis Hamilton in 2023 Singapore Grand Prix

Mercedes looking to move closer to Red Bull with latest upgrade

Mark Thompson/Getty via Red Bull

Mark Hughes

Mercedes arrives in Austin this weekend with a totally new floor, an update which Lewis Hamilton describes as, “Our last big update, the biggest of the large updates through the season, and I’m really excited to see how it feels.”

Technical chief James Allison has said that although they expect it to be a little quicker, its real value will be if it confirms the direction of travel of the team’s understanding.

Meanwhile Carlos Sainz has been pondering how come Ferrari is this year, “suddenly half a second off Red Bull? Why at other circuits we were nearly on pole?”. He spoke of “understanding what was going on and what Red Bull had done to all of us, which was to, all of a sudden, dominate the way they were doing.”

In assessing the Mercedes and Ferrari seasons it’s difficult not to conclude that Red Bull simply developed a concept for the ground-effect regs introduced last year which was right at the first attempt. While the two biggest rival teams not only came up with very different solutions a year ago, but stuck with them into this year – and thereby made Red Bull’s task in maintaining an advantage (despite its mandated resource restrictions) much simpler than it was expecting. To the extent that the advantage actually increased.

Red Bull RB19 reflected in puddle at 2023 Japanese GP

Red Bull’s RB19 has built on last year’s championship-winning car

Clive Rose/Getty via Red Bull

Make no mistake, the Red Bull RB19 will go down as one of the great F1 cars in history. But its advantage has been amplified by what appear to be built-in limitations of the basic concepts from the two teams which should have formed the most potent challenge.

We can expect much more Red Bull-like cars from Mercedes and Ferrari next year. But why this is happening a year late is an intriguing question. The reasons were different in each case. Ferrari’s outwash-focused aerodynamics worked very effectively immediately. Recall that the ’22 car was initially probably even slightly faster than the Red Bull, before the RB18 went on its crash diet. That this coincided with Ferrari having to turn down its engines to protect an underlying mechanical issue which couldn’t be fixed until this year only muddied the waters further. But essentially Ferrari felt no reason to believe its aero concept was inherently limited. But it was. There was far more potential to develop Red Bull’s heavy undercut concept, even if that did entail lifting some mechanical components higher. Ferrari’s initial car was pretty good but the concept just did not have as much development potential. Ironically, its promise set the team in the wrong direction. That much has been acknowledged now.

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Meanwhile Mercedes was different again, with its zero pod concept. The biggest limitation of last year’s W13 was its severe bouncing traits, something which could not be fully addressed with the design hard points of the rear suspension. They couldn’t run the car high enough to keep it out of bouncing territory.  It was a serious limitation and the belief was that with that problem corrected on the W14, its true potential would be revealed as something capable of taking the fight to Red Bull. Whereas there were other problems being disguised by the severity of the bouncing, revealed by the W14. The deficit has halved – but that’s still been nowhere near enough to regularly compete with Max Verstappen. The bodywork and front suspension have been more Red Bull-like since its Monaco upgrade but its geometry is compromised by the hard points of the original, not least in its cockpit positioning.

Two different sets of circumstances have misdirected two of the top teams in recognising where they really needed to have been heading. McLaren meanwhile seemed to have reached an understanding of that required direction earlier – and since its Austria upgrade has been generally the second-fastest car, a car which, as Sainz points out, “is the only one which can sometimes trouble the Red Bull.”

Rear view of Mclaren leading Ferrari at 2023 Austrian GP sprint

McLaren has replaced Ferrari as Red Bull’s closest challenger

Dan Istitene/F1 via Getty Images

But that too was developed around a car originally quite different. Which has left certain legacy limitations, as Lando Norris outlined when considering his Austin prospects. “I’m not so confident [as at Qatar ]. There are just a lot more slow-speed corners here, which is not our strength. I think it’s tough when you look at it. If we look at Singapore, obviously we’re not bad in Singapore, clearly not as strong as Ferrari but still not a bad race. But we know on these types of circuits, Mercedes is going to be very strong, Ferrari is going to be very strong, Aston, here in the past have been very strong. We knew when we went to Qatar it was going to be a track which really suited us: a lot of medium high speed which is where we’re very strong and almost on par with Red Bull. There’s less of that here and a lot more slow-speed so I’m definitely not as confident but nevertheless, I’m not saying it’s going to be a bad weekend. I think we can still fight. It’s just going to be a much bigger fight, I think.”

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