The action Mercedes can take over confusing F1 upgrade

Mercedes is keeping all options on the table, including running a potential back-to-back test with its old package in Singapore, to try to understand why its latest Formula 1 upgrade did not deliver the step forward hoped for.

Mercedes arrived in Malaysia with a major revamp of its W17 car that it hoped would help pull it clear of rivals.

However, rather than unleashing a predicted 0.3-second gain in laptime, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff wondered if it had actually resulted in a step back of up to 0.5 seconds as rival Red Bull took its first victory of the season with Max Verstappen.

Mercedes was at a loss to explain why improvements being shown on the data in terms of extra downforce were not manifesting themselves in the laptimes.

And it was particularly perplexed about why the gains it had made in high-speed corners had come at the cost of low-speed performance, and had appeared to impact its straightline speed as well.

The key answer Mercedes needs from what happened in Malaysia is how much of its performance deficit was down to the new package and how much of it was down to the unique circumstances of the Sepang event – with high temperatures and a rough track surface.

As world championship leader Kimi Antonelli said: “That’s the question we need to answer because we don’t really know if it made us go faster or worse.

“It’s fair to say, this season that whenever we went on really old tarmacs, we’ve struggled.

“For example, in Zandvoort, McLaren was much quicker than us, especially on the older tarmac. So, I think maybe it’s just a question that the tarmac is just very old and that for the tyres it’s very, very hard, and maybe we just struggle on this kind of tarmac.”

While the track surface could explain its problems in slow corners, it would not have impacted its top speed.

But deputy team principal Bradley Lord thinks this was probably mostly related to extra downforce added to the car having resulted in more drag.

“That's probably one of the lesser question marks,” he said. “We know that adding downforce that brings with it drag, and the calculation is that what you gain in the corners will outweigh what you lose down the straights.

“We've seen what we're expecting there, we're seeing the benefit in the high-speed corners and the medium-speed - and the drivers say they can feel it as well. 

"But there's no doubt that we've struggled in certain corners all weekend, particularly the slower ones.”

Mercedes is set for some intense engineering debriefs over the next few days to try to get to the bottom of what happened in Malaysia, and work out how best to get answers for this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix.

It is understood that the squad is open-minded about how best to tackle the issue and that nothing is off the table right now.

One possibility to fast-track an answer about what has happened could be to run the Mercedes cars in different configurations in practice in Singapore so it can gather real-world data about the gains and losses from the new upgrade.

If it concludes that the upgrade has not worked, then it is not ruling out rolling back on it long term despite the logistical complications that would cause.

Equally, Mercedes could ultimately conclude that the Bahrain GP showing was a one-off caused by the heat and track surface, and it sticks to pushing on with the new parts on both cars.

What Mercedes does for Singapore depends on what conclusions are found early this week. There's also the added compliation of Singapore being a sprint event with only one practice session on Friday.

Lord added: “There are many things to unpick. We've seen some teams without upgrades take a step forward this weekend.

“Other upgraded teams have taken a step forward, while [some other] teams that have upgrades have performed less well than we might have expected.

“We're not the only people with some questions to answer as we leave the weekend. But certainly we've got to unpick what is down to what and understand if that has any implications on how we head into Singapore and the remaining six races after that.”