Mercedes will bring an upcoming trio upgrade of Formula 1 races over a back-to-back weekend when technical director James Allison hopes to help the team close the gap with McLaren.
Oscar Piastri led McLaren 1-2 at the Miami Grand Prix, where George Russell drifted for over 30 minutes in third place. Russell is just six points behind Max Verstappen in driver rankings, but he says Piastri and Allison, now 38 leaders, are set to bring bigger new parts to cars in Imola, Monaco and Barcelona.
“We actually brought an upgrade,” Alison said. “They aren’t particularly big or sexy, but they’re becoming a steady trickle. In the next handful of races, there’s something more obvious than the outside world.
“We’ve already been a quarter of the season, we’re appearing hard and fast on our teams. When racing comes to you in this way, it’s very difficult to upgrade to a car.
“Hopefully what happens in the next two or three races will move the dial a little for us. We will also continue to work on the tire temperatures of the race and improve our destiny.”
With Mercedes’ recent qualifying performances being strong, with Kimi Antoneri in the pole position of the Miami sprint and then again 0.067 off the Grand Prix pole, Alison believes that understanding how to control tire temperatures in race distance can give the team the greatest step.
“We were pretty strong in qualifying for the first few races, so I think we can expect an OK cry to reasonably raise the grid up in qualifying,” he said. “If we’re a little lucky, the upgrade might make it a little better, but the main thing we’re focusing on is trying to control the pace of that race.
“The majority of that is controlling the temperature of those tires and therefore allowing you to use the pace within them.”