Mercedes set to re-introduce the heavily-upgraded Spa floor in Zandvoort

Having performed a thorough investigation after the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin insists that the Brackley-based outfit is set to re-introduce the upgraded floor that was abandoned at Spa.

For the last race before the summer break, Mercedes brought a total of five upgrades. The most visible update revolved around the floor that has gone through key changes compared to the previous version.

The new floor sported an additional flap element over the forward section of its edge.

Furthermore, the expansion of the floor that is referred to as diffusor has also been altered, with the roof section featuring an increased camber compared to the previous assembly.

All these changes had indicated that Mercedes had been confident that generating more downforce with the floor would not induce bouncing that hindered the car’s behaviour when the sport switched to the ground-effect cars.

However, after the Friday's practice sessions, the German-British outfit abandoned the upgraded floor, and reverted to the older-spec floor.

Following the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff revealed that trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin detected a mechanical issue on the W15 that held its real performance back on Friday.

This suggested that the upgraded floor brought the step in improvement the that hoped for, and the issue was that the team pursued a wrong mechanical setup that induced bouncing.

Reflecting on the issues at Spa, Shovlin noted: "One of the issues with Spa is it's a fast circuit and it needs a lot of commitment from the driver.

"We've managed to introduce a bit of bouncing to the car, so in the high-speed corners, that's not great for their confidence.

"There were a couple of other balance issues where they had a lack of entry stability. When you're wanting to brake late and carry speed into a corner, that doesn't help.

Now, at a normal track, that might have cost us a little bit of time, but you look atnit on a big circuit like Spa with some pretty big corners, that was becoming a large number.

"The car wasn't in the right place, but as I said, it's one of those very specific things about Spa where if the drivers haven't got the car doing what they want, it can cost them a lot of performance. And it was exactly the right thing for us to just revert to that known specification."

Shovlin has now confirmed that the team is intent on bringing the upgraded floor back at the Dutch Grand Prix.

"We are planning to do that. Now, the reason that we removed that, and we essentially reverted the car to the Silverstone spec on Friday night, we did that because we had a good race in Silverstone.

"Spa and Silverstone are not dramatically different circuits in terms of the corner speed range that you're dealing with."

"We'd clearly introduced some problems somewhere. We think that was largely due to how we were running the car in Spa, not induced by the updates themselves. That was obviously giving us a bit of bouncing in the high-speed corners, a few issues with the balance.

"Going to that Silverstone car got it all back to normal. We've since had time to look at the data to understand what it was we did exactly and knowing that, we're pretty confident that we'll be going for a reintroduction in Zandvoort."

Mercedes has endured a difficult start to the 2024 Formula 1, having suffered a sizeable deficit to the field-leading Red Bull.

One of the key objectives for Mercedes was to have a car that worked consistently and performed in line with what the team expected.

However, the Brackley-based squad struggled to optimise the car across corner speed ranges saw it end without a podium in the first eight races of the 2024 F1 season.

However, Mercedes now find themselves on an upward trajectory. An ambitious development route has seen the German-British outfit overcome its issues and return to the sharp end with six successive podiums and three wins in four rounds.

Reflecting on Mercedes' season so far, Shovlin said: "Well, I think the main thing is the progress. Where we were in the early races in Bahrain, in Jeddah, it was difficult to look at the car and understand what it was you had to do to make it quick.

"We could see it had certain strengths, but it also had plenty of weaknesses. Now, the team has responded brilliantly to that challenge.

"We know where we want to get to in terms of performance level. We knew that we wanted to be winning races, and we set ourselves a target of by the end of the season, we wanted to be qualifying on pole and winning races.

"Now, the last four races, we've had three wins in that. We've had six podiums on the trot.

"That's perhaps been more than we'd expected at that point. But, as I said, we're really enjoying the racing now.

"We're enjoying the challenge. It feels like the team has a bit of momentum behind it, and we're hoping that we can carry that into the final bit of the season, continue to develop and hopefully continue to win some races," concluded Shovlin.