Yahoo Autos Mercedes upgrades now ‘making much more sense’ – Wolff
Mercedes will continue bringing new parts to its 2024 car at the Spanish Grand Prix as Toto Wolff says its development path is now “making much more sense”.
George Russell qualified on pole position and finished third in the Canadian Grand Prix, fighting for the win throughout the weekend as Mercedes solidified recent gains to challenge at the front of the field. With Lewis Hamilton fourth and similarly quick, Wolff says the upgrades brought to the car since the start of the European season have all been working effectively and allowing Mercedes to push ahead with growing confidence in its current direction.
“I think definitely since Imola we’ve taken the right steps and put parts on the car that were working,” Wolff said. “That was something we were struggling with in the past couple of years, and now directionally we seem to be adding performance every weekend, and with new parts coming also in Barcelona that should help us. So I would very much hope that we can continue this positive trajectory.
“I’m always a bit worried when you’ve been carried away that everything seems to now be falling into place, because this is a difficult sport. We’ve had this positive trajectory now for the last three races and everything seems to be making much more sense. The stopwatch will tell us.
“Sometimes when things interact well with each other, the overall flow structure becomes more efficient, you are able to optimize the ride height and bit-by-bit we’ve added more performance. So another step in Barcelona and hopefully we will see it on the stopwatch.”
Wolff says it’s not just the front wing that was introduced in Monaco that led to Mercedes’ performance level in Canada, stating it’s a combination of different parts over the past few rounds.
“Sometimes when you bring a highly visible part like bodywork or a front wing, this is pretty much the talk of what has changed the performance,” he said. “The truth is we have, over the last few races, brought so many new parts, visible and invisible to the eye, that have contributed milliseconds to more performance.
“I think this is where those marginal gains then have that positive effect and that was just a huge effort of the factory. So I think the wheel has started to get some real motion now.”
