Mercedes has revealed upgrades for this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix in an attempt to rectify an ‘underlying balance’ that has caused difficulties for the team. Going into Miami, Lewis Hamilton is enduring his worst ever start to an F1 season and Mercedes team-mate George Russell has just one top five result so far. Hamilton was clearly frustrated during the Chinese Grand Prix after being knocked out in Q1 and fought hard to finish ninth in the race. James Allison, Mercedes’ technical director, stated, ‘The challenge that we face in the coming races is to try and move both the set up of the car and also the pieces that we bring to the car so that [the balance] is improved.’ Allison also expressed optimism about the upgrades, saying, ‘We’ve got upgrade packages coming to the car but also components that we hope will rectify the underlying balance that is causing us difficulty.’ The big positive from Mercedes’ weekend in Shanghai came when Hamilton started on the front row for the Sprint and held onto second place behind Max Verstappen in the shortened race. Miami will host the second Sprint weekend of the season, so there will be just one hour of practice for Mercedes to gather data and understand their aerodynamic updates before going straight into Sprint Qualifying on Friday night. Allison added, ‘Every weekend you go to you learn things. It’s one of the truisms of F1, it is a learning race and although you have a factory full of tools, you have a load of computational power, a load of people who are thinking about it, there is no place to learn about the car better than with the car at the track doing what it’s designed to do.’ Mercedes had redesigned most of their car over the winter after going winless in a season for the first time in over a decade. They abandoned their ‘no sidepods’ concepts 12 months ago but the 2024 car is still a long way behind Red Bull, while Ferrari and McLaren have also jumped ahead in the pecking order. Allison said, ‘Hopefully we’ll land a car in a better place, that the upgrades that we’re going to bring to Miami serve us well in a grid that in Qualifying at least is really close.’ Mercedes will be hoping that the upgrades and setup adjustments will help them improve their car’s performance and challenge for better results in Miami.
Mercedes Reveal Upgrades for Miami GP, Aiming to Cure Car’s ‘Underlying Balance’
