Upgraded Mercedes Closing Gap on Red Bull at F1 Spanish Grand Prix

• Mercedes has won only once in Formula 1’s current regulatory cycle, which dates back to the start of the 2022 season.

• The team, however, is coming off its best showing of the season as George Russell claimed pole position and went on to finish third.

• Mercedes Team principal Toto Wolff was also cautiously optimistic over the potential of the W15 at upcoming venues.

Formula 1 resumes this weekend with three races across three weekends in Spain, Austria and Britain, with Max Verstappen well on his way toward a fourth successive crown.

But while the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya is expected to play to the strengths of Red Bull’s RB20 and to a driver who has won six of this year’s nine events, the emergence of Ferrari and McLaren as a threat has created greater intrigue in recent Grands Prix.

And now there’s the prospect of throwing a fourth team into the mix.

Mercedes has won only once in Formula 1’s current regulatory cycle—courtesy of George Russell in São Paulo in 2022—and this year it slipped further adrift of the front-running pack.

Mercedes overhauled the design concept of its W15 and realized early in the season that it had not yet unearthed the right compromise. A raft of updates, tackling those primary weaknesses, were introduced across events in Miami, Imola and Monaco, the main component being a revised front wing.

Mercedes claimed points finishes between fifth and ninth across the opening eight Grands Prix—aside from its disaster in Australia—but had an uplifting in performance in Canada. There, George Russell claimed pole position and went on to take third—his first podium of the year—in a wet/dry race.

Russell believed a couple of errors cost him a chance of the win in Canada. Teammate Lewis Hamilton, meanwhile, was critical of his own performance Canada but still claimed fourth, which was his best race finish since Mexico City last October.

Now Mercedes has the chance to prove that its uplift in performance is a tangible breakthrough and not a flash-in-the-pan. The next three events take place at conventional permanent tracks—Barcelona, the Red Bull Ring, and Silverstone—and will allow Mercedes a litmus test of its gains.

“Ahead of Canada we were trying these upgrades in the simulator and it seemed a big step forward,” Russell said. “Honestly I didn’t really believe it when I was driving it on the simulator, and it truly turned out to be true in Canada.

“We also had some indications Canada, having very similar corners around the circuit, that we’d be fast there, and this [Barcelona] will be a real test. If we can be fast this weekend it bodes really well for the season.

“It’ll be good coming back to [Barcelona], Austria, Silverstone, more conventional circuits and seeing where the pace of this car really trickles out. I think ourselves, McLaren, Ferrari have made some big strides towards Red Bull. We also know that they [Red Bull] had challenging races in the bumpy tracks, so I think we’re all sat here with anticipations of ‘what if’, ‘are we making the gains that we expected and hope for’ and come next week we’ll have a better indication of how the rest of the season will pan out.”

Mercedes Team principal Toto Wolff was also cautiously optimistic over the potential of the W15 at upcoming venues.

“We know our competitors will perform more strongly at upcoming races so we will need to continue to work hard to consistently get ourselves in the fight for podiums, and eventually race wins,” Wolff said.

“Barcelona will provide a good test of our progress. It has a mix of fast, medium, and low speed corners, a long straight and plenty of elevation change. Tracks that contain this wide speed range have been a weakness of ours so far this year. This weekend will therefore provide another opportunity to evaluate our progress through our recent updates, and we hope to build on the positive momentum from Montreal.”