“Mega job guys, mega job!” exclaimed Lewis Hamilton over his team radio as he finished P2 at the Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona. Teammate, George Russell, finished P3 and shared the podium with Hamilton, scoring the team’s first double podium finish of the season. The podium spotlight is in part to do with the massive upgrade package developed for the W14 by the Mercedes Petronas team at their Brackley factory.
The new W14 is not a true B-spec car due to the budget cap not allowing teams to change the chassis and monocoque completely. This new W14, which I will dub the W14 Mark 2 (Mk. 2), features completely redesigned aerodynamics, underfloor, and front suspension concepts.
The most noticeable change the Mk. 2 has are its sidepods; gone is the infamous zero-sidepod concept, and in comes full-sized sidepods that resemble every top team on the grid. Mercedes’ sidepods are large and push out air similar to Ferrari’s design. They also have a waterfall-esque slope in the back to feed air into the beam wing, and a rear diffuser akin to Aston Martin.
The underfloor has changed to allow better airflow through the venturi tunnels, and the redone front suspension is a push rod configuration similar to Red Bull and Aston Martin. This gives the W14 better tire degradation through the race, and lets it ride lower to the ground to improve the underfloor and aerodynamics without the deadly porpoising that plagued the W13 last year.
The Mk. 2 isn’t completely perfect, and Mercedes still has a lot of catching up to do to reach Red Bull. Even with the upgrades, Lewis Hamilton finished 24 seconds behind Max Verstappen in P1 at Barcelona. However, the new W14 overall race pace was on fire in Spain. Hamilton had a great launch at lights out and easily overtook Lance Stroll in his Aston Martin once the drag reduction system (DRS) was enabled on Lap 3. The Mk. 2 was fast and still had good tire management even on the softest tire compound. With a clever pit stop strategy, Hamilton was able to easily catch and clear Carlos Sainz in his slower Ferrari SF-23.
George Russell also had a fabulous race day despite a sad qualifying performance that saw him start the race in P12. His launch at the start was better than Hamilton’s, jumping up multiple positions on the opening lap, and maintaining his momentum throughout the race. Russell’s W14 Mk.2 with the help of DRS made overtaking look easy on the Circuit Barcelona de Catalunya’s main straight. Blowing past his competition, Russell was able to outpace Sergio Perez, who started in P11 in the still dominant RB19.
“This is what we were hoping for when we brought the upgrades,” said Hamilton in his post-race interviews. “We had hoped for more in the sense of a bigger step. The actual performance step they told us was under two-tenths. That’s still good, but not the step that everyone is working so hard towards, but we’ll take it. But this result is definitely what we are working towards, and this is amazing. Down to all the great, great work from the people back at the factory just keeping their heads down. I hope everyone is feeling very proud back at the factory.”
“I mean we’ve always been showing in Barcelona, but the upgrades definitely worked as expected which is really promising to see,” said Russell. “Thanks, a huge amount to everybody who put so much hard work and effort into this. It’s truly paying off. But we’re already looking forward to the next races and already looking to the next updates and how we can close that gap to Red Bull.”
Our home race, the Canadian Grand Prix in Montreal, followed Barcelona. It was an exciting ninth round filled with overtakes and tire strategies across the grid and made for a great spectacle. Max Verstappen finished in P1 yet again, securing Red Bull’s 100th race win to join an elite class of teams in the sport. Fernando Alonso finished in P2, driving his newly upgraded Aston Martin. Hamilton, in the new W14, drove well and ended in P3, scoring Mercedes’ first back-to-back podium of the season. Mercedes will look to maintain their podium streak at the upcoming Austrian Grand Prix until their next major step in their upgrade plans — which will most likely be shown at the British Grand Prix at the historic Silverstone Circuit. It’s a long-standing track that the team will have lots of data on, but time will tell if they can make use of the technical direction of their car this year.
Teryn Midzain is an English Major with ambitious goals to write movies and a full-time nerd, whose personality and eccentrics run on high-octane like the cars he loves. More importantly, Teryn loves sports [Formula One], and doesn’t care who knows. When not creating and running deadly schemes in his D&D sessions, Teryn tries to reach the core of what makes the romantic and dramatic World of Sports, the characters and people that make the events so spectacular.