It was hard to imagine an all-silver front row at Silverstone, monopolized by that same Mercedes that three months ago was struggling as the fifth force. It’s the beauty of a never-static Formula 1, where developments rewrite hierarchies month by month in a delicate game of compromises. Developing without ruining the car’s balance is the great challenge faced by teams, and Mercedes is making a difference over Ferrari in this regard.
The W15 comes to life
It’s impossible to talk about the English qualifiers without mentioning the big absentee of the day. Max Verstappen had an off-track excursion in Q1 that damaged the floor, losing, according to him, 100 points of downforce, equivalent to 25-30% of the total. A probable exaggeration by the world champion, who nevertheless managed to slip between the McLarens of Norris and Piastri.
The Mercedes one-two therefore lacks the reference par excellence, but not that of the McLarens, which have been vying for the role of first force for months. The Silver Arrows’ front row is anything but accidental, with Hamilton and Russell consistently among the top five in both Q1 and Q2. It’s a W15 that comes to life at Silverstone, with the cold and damp track helping to bring the tires into the correct operating window, conditions also present during the pole position achieved in Canada.
Montreal, however, was a completely different track compared to Silverstone, where aerodynamic efficiency and balance are needed, along with a wider variety of corners. Historically, Mercedes boasts an excellent interpretation of its home track, fighting for the podium even during the turbulent 2022 and 2023 seasons. In general, however, the Brackley team is experiencing a significant rise, where the awareness of a residual lag behind Red Bull and McLaren does not erase the satisfaction towards a car that has changed profoundly in recent months.
The changes made by Mercedes in recent months are small but have made a huge difference. The lack of downforce was never the main problem, but rather the flaws in balance. The Brackley team went from an oversteering car in 2023 to an understeering one at the start of 2024, slowly finding a more neutral balance. The challenge then was to correct the imbalances between high and low speeds, working to make the additional downforce usable. “When you fix the balance, the tire temperatures are then in the correct window and the lap time benefits downstream. They weren’t big changes, but they made a huge difference on the stopwatch,” explains Russell.
In April, Toto Wolff pointed out how from the previous season the car had not gained a single km/h in cornering speed despite an increase in downforce of almost 25%, an image of a car that could not translate wind tunnel gains into lap times. Lewis Hamilton’s comments after Silverstone qualifying are eloquent: “This team has never struggled to add performance. The debate was rather where to look for it with this generation of cars and where the downforce came from.”
The Silver Arrow now seems to have found that performance that matters, with downforce finally usable by the drivers without penalizing balance and drivability. It’s a W15 capable of withstanding even the gusts of wind on the English Saturday, demonstrating that stability in yaw fundamental in high-speed direction changes when the car repeatedly changes orientation relative to the airflow. Hence, George Russell’s words are more than understandable, in the euphoria of the pole talking about a Mercedes “on rails.”
The Woking team does not go beyond third position with Lando Norris, but with the optimism of having cards to play in the race. At Silverstone, McLaren once again shows pole position potential, missed due to the inability to put together the lap at the decisive moment. Already in 2023, the British cars were able to fight for top positions on the English circuit, but compared to a year ago the MCL38 is a much more complete car. “Last year the car here was clearly fast in high-speed corners, while now it’s faster at all speeds,” reflects Andrea Stella. “Compared to last year, we have improved especially at medium and low speeds.” McLaren’s journey is yet another example of what effective development is: ensuring a car that works for lap time rather than expressing peak downforce records. Qualities currently lacking in Ferrari.
Red collapse
Charles Leclerc pays a high price for his mistake in Q2, relegating him to the sixth row of the grid. However, the single episode does not change the picture of a Ferrari in difficulty at Silverstone, with Carlos Sainz behind even Nico Hulkenberg’s Haas. After a long Friday of testing, on Saturday morning the Scuderia decided to abandon the Barcelona aerodynamic package in favor of the Imola one, which is less powerful in terms of downforce but also less problematic in terms of drivability. “The balance was slightly better and this is the main reason we went back to the old package,” emphasizes Charles Leclerc.
Carlos Sainz makes a similar comment, repeating that in the Imola configuration Ferrari guarantees better balance and drivability: “It didn’t give us any extra performance, but it’s simply more consistent in high-speed corners. With that floor, we suffer less from bouncing, and we had to make the car as consistent and predictable as possible at high speeds.” The return to the old package, however, is not enough to bring Ferrari to the front, with the late Saturday morning decision also limiting the time to optimize the setup.
The Spanish driver also debunks a myth, explaining how the bouncing was present on the SF-24 even before Barcelona: “We had bouncing since the beginning of the year. It’s an intrinsic weakness of the car, but the new version is clearly worse than the previous one. Hence the decision to keep the old one for Silverstone.” For Ferrari, the goal is clear: to turn the increase in downforce into a gain on the stopwatch. The Scuderia thus faces the same problems that Mercedes did, the very team it now looks up to.
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