TECHNICAL: Mercedes bolsters its performance with key change to the front suspension

F1's Brackley-based outfit, Mercedes has recently introduced a key change to the front suspension of its W15 to further bolster the performance of its 2024 Formula One car. F1Technical's senior writer Balazs Szabo reveals Mercedes' recent hidden upgrade.

Although Mercedes delivered encouraging performance during pre-season testing and in the opening rounds of the year, the Brackley-based outfit failed to convert these impressive practice performances into race results.

However, the Anglo-German squad started to add key upgrades to the W15 in Imola which suddenly brought the car into a much better working window.

Mercedes has introduced a new front wings, different versions of rear wings, key modifications to the floor and aerodynamic changes to the front and rear suspension fairing.

However, team boss Toto Wolff has said there has been more than just a raft of visible changes for the Mercedes W15 that has helped the team move forward in recent F1 2024 races.

“Sometimes when you bring a highly visible part, like the bodywork or front wing, that is pretty much the talk of what has changed the performance,” Wolff said.

“The truth is we have over the last three races brought so many new parts visible and invisible for the eye, that have contributed milliseconds to more performance – and 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.”

At Spielberg, the team introduced a key tweak to the suspension damper. While those changes are usually remain undiscovered, the illustration by Rosario Giuliana shows that the dimensions of the new suspension part required a new vanity panel. The image shows that its upper part is housed within a rounded bulge.

Suspension has been considered as a pivotal part of Red Bull's success in Formula One's current ground-effect car era. With the current floor playing a much bigger role than during the previous 'flat floor' era, a stable aerodynamic platform can provide an enormous advantage

It has been believed that Red Bull's suspension system has enabled the team to run its cars closer to the ground than others for maximum downforce, without it risking porpoising, damaging the plank, nor facing compromises when turning.

In the first two years of the new era, Mercedes has been suffering from aerodynamic porpoising. Although the W13 and W14 were believed to produce a huge amount of downforce, the team was unable to extract its full potential because of the aerodynamic bouncing. This often meant that Mercedes was forced to run the car much higher.

Technical Director James Allison said that key to Mercedes upturn in competitiveness was that the recent developments have helped cure the W15’s inconsistent performance across high and low speed corners.

“Well, I think that the thing that has bedevilled us from the start of the year, the overriding thing, was that you could get the car okay in a slow corner, you could get it quite decent in a fast corner, but you couldn’t get it good in both at the same time,” Allison told the Beyond the Grid podcast.

“What has changed in the last two, three races, is that we’ve modified the car in such a way as it has a reasonable high to low-speed balance and a reasonable through corner balance.

“It just means that the driver can trust both the front and rear axle in a fast corner and a slow corner and can trust it from when he hits the brakes at the beginning of the corner through the apex and out the other side.

“That balance is crucial to a driver, that they know whether the car is going to understeer, or oversteer, and whether it’s going to follow the trajectory they are asking," concluded Allison.