Mercedes not backing off on car development

Mercedes AMG team principal Ross Brawn had outed himself extremely optimistic for the remainder of the season after his team has won three of the last five races.

Brawn and the entire team initially feared that the re-introduction of the 2012 tyre carcass would worsen the team's tyre management problems, but at the very hot Hungarian GP, Lewis Hamilton was able to manage that perfectly and nearly unthreatened went on to finish that race.

It was clearly a major achievement that sees rival teams worried. Previous wins were usually attributed to bad luck from others or the particular circuit being kind to tyres, but none of that held up at Hungary.

Instead, Brawn is now confident that further updates will keep the team at the forefront, especially as other teams are backing off and focusing on the 2014 project.

"I know the things which are coming through on the technical front and our hit rate has been pretty good on new technical innovations this year. Things we’ve brought to the track have generally worked," said Brawn in a Q&A on the team's YouTube channel. "We’ve got some things coming up in the next few races which could give us that extra impetus and extra momentum to take us through the second half of the year."

Brawn is aware that it remains a balancing act to make sure the 2014 season gets off on a good start as well, but the performance level of the F1W04 at this moment clearly is a solid base to work with.

"A lot of the races are flyaways where we’re a long way away from base," Brawn went on to explain. "You tend not to get quite so much development going on in the second half, also with everyone mindful of what a challenge next year will be. I don’t think there are going to be huge innovations for the second half, so where we are is well placed."