Mercedes plans to bring upgrades at the Miami GP

Team struggles and setup challenges

Mercedes endured another challenging weekend at the Chinese Grand Prix, where the promising second-place finish for Lewis Hamilton in the sprint race failed to translate into a strong performance in the main event.

George Russell finished sixth, while Hamilton could only manage ninth place, leaving the team once again searching for answers as to why they cannot unlock the full potential of their W15 car.

Despite significant setup direction changes for both drivers after the Saturday sprint, the team's performance did not improve significantly, leaving an element of mystery surrounding the car's behavior.

Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team boss, acknowledged the difficulties in setting up and driving the car, stating:

"I think the car is a difficult car to set up and difficult to drive, and that is why you have these oscillations in performances in my opinion."

"I think where the car is, and where Lewis's car was, was certainly far away from the optimum, and it is driving on a knife-edge."

Upgrades on the horizon

Wolff revealed that Mercedes is planning to introduce new upgrades at the upcoming Miami Grand Prix, saying,

"For Miami, we are bringing new bits, and it will be interesting to see how they are going to perform on the car."

Back-to-basics approach advocated

George Russell suggested that the lack of significant performance gains despite major setup changes over the China weekend could indicate that the team may need to accept that the car is currently performing at its maximum potential. He stated:

"We've had two different set-ups this weekend, both of which produced very similar lap times and performance."

" So, the work needs to be back at the factory, and ultimately in F1, the more downforce you have, the faster you'll go. The set-up is the cherry on the cake."

Russell advocated for a back-to-basics approach, moving away from the pursuit of a perfect setup and focusing instead on aggressive development and a series of upgrades to increase downforce.

"I think there is no silver bullet,"

Russell explained.

"We just need to keep on adding performance and focusing on the basics, which is in the wind tunnel and in the CFD: just adding downforce. Maybe sometimes it's as simple as that."

Reaching a ceiling with current concept

Russell suggested that after experimenting with various philosophies and concepts over the past two years, Mercedes may have reached a ceiling with their current equipment. He stated:

"I think we've understood enough so far that we just need to add downforce. We've changed philosophies and we've changed concepts quite a few times now over the last two years."

"My personal view is that no matter what concept you're on, you just need to have as much downforce as possible, and you'll deal with the limitations thereafter."

As the team looks ahead to the Miami Grand Prix, their focus will be on the upgrades they plan to introduce, with the hope of unlocking more performance and closing the gap to the front-runners.