Team notes: Mercedes leaves Miami with a low-key result

Mercedes brought several upgrades to Miami in the hope of raising the performance level of its W15 following a difficult start to the 2024 F1 season. However, the Miami round saw the Brackley-based outfit struggle for pace both in qualifying and race conditions.

Lewis Hamilton started the Miami F1 Sprint from P12, but he escaped a first-turn four-car melee unscathed, which meant that he was on course to score a few points in the 100km dash. He was then involved in a race-long battle with Kevin Magnussen and Yuki Tsunoda, but a time penalty for speeding in the pit lane during the safety car interruption meant that he finished the sprint outside the point-scoring range.

The seven-time world champion then started the grand prix from P8 on the grid. He elected to start the race on Pirelli’s Hard compound which saw him struggle for grip in the opening laps. In his final stint, the Briton displayed encouraging speed and kept Red Bull’s Sergio Perez under immense pressure despite being on tyres of the same compound and age.

Commenting the positive final stint, Hamilton said:”I am so happy for Lando and McLaren. They have both been doing a great job and they deserve today’s victory. It’s great to see McLaren so competitive. I also know how special it is to get your first Grand Prix victory so a big well done to Lando.

“In my race today, I had some enjoyable battles out there. I was giving it everything I had to make progress and made a couple of good overtakes. We were challenging the Red Bull at the end so to be able to race them felt great. Today was probably the best day of Racing I’ve had this year, so we just need to keep pushing. We’ve got some more small upgrades coming for Imola. Others are developing too but we will keep working hard.”

His team-mate Russell had a tough afternoon in his W15. The one-time F1 race winner had an acceptable initial stint only to struggle on hards in his final stint.

Speaking of his experiences in the Miami round, Russell commented: “A massive well done to Lando and McLaren. He truly deserves it, and all told, he probably deserves to have more than one victory already by now. We’ve been Racing each other for a long time; he’s put so much hard work in, and I had no doubts that he would win in F1. I’m very happy for him.

“My race today was difficult. I lost a few positions at the start and then in the final stint, I had no pace on the Hard tyre and was struggling a lot. We will go away and assess why that was. Our lack of speed was quite unexpected, whilst Lewis had a strong race so there was definite speed in the car.”

Expanding on the Miami race, team boss Toto Wolff said: “Firstly, well done to McLaren and Lando. He has long been overdue his first win and today he drove a very strong race. McLaren have been on a big upward trajectory since last year and that is good for us to see; it shows what is possible. Congratulations too to everyone involved in designing, manufacturing, and operating the Mercedes Power Unit at High Performance Powertrains in Brixworth.

“The good news in our race today was that, like-for-like on the Medium tyre, we showed that we had good speed. Lewis was faster than Perez in the Red Bull ahead on the same compound but wasn’t quite able to make the overtake. George struggled a little more on the Hard tyre but overall it was encouraging to see the improvements we made from Friday and that we had solid pace compared to others.”

Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin stated that the main cause for the issues was the lack of speed in the slow corners.

“Our race today was relatively straightforward,” Shovlin started. “We knew it was going to be hard to move forward; the car hasn’t been handling well around this track and we’ve struggled in the slower corners particularly. Lewis had a tough stint on the Hard but after the restart was much happier with the car on the Medium compound.

“Unfortunately we didn’t quite have the straight-line speed to get past Perez, but it was good to be able to race him at the end. It was a frustrating afternoon for George meanwhile. He was sliding around and struggling to get the tyres to bite. We’ll look into that over the next few days.

“Our focus is of course on making the car faster. We have some good developments in the pipeline and will push hard to get them to the car as soon as we can.”