Mercedes warned Spanish GP ‘ultimate test of their progress’ after Canada surge

George Russell in front of the Mercedes garage in Canada.

Despite George Russell’s Canadian Grand Prix podium, Damon Hill is withholding judgement on their progress until the upgraded W15 has gone through the “ultimate test” of the “Barcelona wind tunnel.”

Mercedes delivered their best result of the F1 2024 season at the Canadian Grand Prix where Russell stuck his W15 on pole position before racing his way to third place.

Damon Hill is withholding judgement on Mercedes’ progress

With Lewis Hamilton bringing his car home in fourth place, Mercedes bagged their biggest points haul of the season with 28, but remain a distant fourth in the Constructors’ Championship.

It was nonetheless an encouraging sign for Mercedes with 1996 champion Hill saying the new front wing, which was on both cars for the first time, appears to have done the “trick.”

He told the Sky F1 podcast: “It seems amazing, doesn’t it? But it has been a long time since they had a car that looked anything like a car that they could campaign with and the drivers were happy.

“Lewis, notably, was very, very happy. It’s not the first time. He did say he was very happy in a few FP sessions and Fridays and stuff, and then it seemed to kind of fade away when it got to qualifying.

“But George did a great job with the car he had to get pole position. How long has it been since they had a pole at Mercedes? The car looked good on the track.

“Jacques [Villeneuve] mentioned it looked planted and he was right. The car looked like it wasn’t skittish and it wasn’t porpoising, and it did look like he could use a bit of kerb.

“So they’re comfortable, they’re happy. The new front wing seems to have been the trick that seems to have harmonised all the aerodynamics, brought about some performance.”

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But as Hill pointed out, the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve is an “outlier” track while Formula 1’s next venue, the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, is a more traditional high-downforce circuit.

And that will be Mercedes’ big test.

“But it is an outlier track, Canada,” Hill continued. “To go with that [car] to Barcelona, which is the next race, that will be the ultimate test of their progress.

“Barcelona is really just like a wind tunnel. It is pure aero, medium-to-high speed everywhere.”

Naomi Schiff: Not necessarily just the front wing

But while Hill reckons the new front wing was the “trick” to unlocking the car’s potential, his fellow pundit and former W Series racer Naomi Schiff believes there’s more to it than one key element.

“You can tell that the direction that they’re going in now is clearly working,” she said. “Whether that’s just because they’re developing the car rather than putting out fires as they maybe have in the past, I’m not entirely sure.

“I think there have been so many times that Mercedes have bought updates that have worked better than they expected, or others that they were expecting a lot out of and there was actually not very much correlation between what they were seeing back at base and on track.

“Whereas now you can tell that what they’ve done has been able to unlock the potential that was already in the car. So whilst everyone’s singing the praises of this front wing, yes the front wing is the element that’s been able to unlock their potential, but it’s not necessarily just the front wing that’s bringing all that additional performance.

“It’s the combination of what that’s doing and how it’s interacting with the rest of the car. Obviously, they had this front wing on George’s car in Monaco, but Monaco is not that much of an aerodynamic track so we probably couldn’t see all of the benefits of the front wing until Canada.”

Like Hill, she too is interested to see how the W15 performs in Spain.

” Canada is obviously an outlier and Barcelona has proven to be in the past a track that, because of the nature of its variation of corners, can be a track that will give you a good indication of how the cars will perform it many other circuits,” she said. “So I’m really excited to head to Barcelona and see where everybody truly stands.”