Team principal Toto Wolff expects Mercedes to make a bigger step forward at the next two races in Hungary and Belgium as a result of planned upgrades, following its win at the British Grand Prix.
Lewis Hamilton won at Silverstone for a record ninth time last Sunday, having started second to teammate George Russell who was forced to retire with a mechanical issue. The performance level from Mercedes came at a race where it had introduced largely circuit-specific developments, and Wolff says the next round of upgrades was actually targeted at the final two races before the summer break.
“When you consider five races ago we weren’t even contenders for the podium, which looked like the third year of non-performance… and then it clicked,” Wolff said. “Suddenly, everything which didn’t make sense made sense. The development direction, or the results of the development directions are like in the old days — we are finding performance and we are putting it on the car. It translates into lap time.
“That wasn’t the case for the last two years. And there’s more to come in terms of performance. We are bringing upgrades to Budapest and Spa.
“But on the other side we mustn’t get carried away. We had the win [with Russell in Austria] benefitting from them [Max Verstappen and Lando Norris] tangling but [at Silverstone] we had an honest win. We had the real pace. You could see George and Lewis in the lead and almost under all conditions we were in the lead. We are there.”
[lawrence-auto-related count=3 category=1388]
Wolff agrees with Russell’s assessment that Mercedes has proven itself to be firmly in the mix with Red Bull and McLaren with its Silverstone performance, rather than being overly reliant on track conditions.
“Yeah, it does feel that way. Because last weekend [in Austria] we were not far off, when you look at the gap we had before they crashed. It was nearly two-tenths a lap, a bit more. And that is the closest we’ve been for a long time on a track we didn’t like so much in the past. That kind of gave us hints that it could be getting much better.
“Honestly, we didn’t think it would be Silverstone because there was barely anything [new on the car] — we were more expecting Budapest or Spa. But I agree with George, we justified what we do is right at the moment.”