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Mercedes' latest upgrade package is far from the outright failure some have labeled it, but it has undeniably made the car much more nervous and difficult to tame. That explains why the German outfit chose to split configurations between their two drivers for the Singapore Grand Prix weekend.
After a spell of recent dominance, Mercedes have looked vulnerable for a second consecutive round. As a result, George Russell was reverted to the older-spec machinery with which he claimed victory in Azerbaijan. The Briton qualified second for the sprint, whereas championship leader Andrea Kimi Antonelli languished in seventh with the updated package, half a second adrift of his teammate. Russell had his own hurdles in Sprint Qualifying, hovering outside the top ten towards the end of SQ2 before securing his shootout spot on his final flyer following a lock-up on his previous run.
Mercedes introduced their final major upgrade package of the season a week ago in Malaysia. Neither Russell nor Antonelli managed to mount a challenge against Max Verstappen there, and the team's struggles worsened when the British driver suffered an engine failure in the closing stages of the Grand Prix.
While Russell's reversion to the previous spec might seem like an admission of failure regarding the new components, the reality is far more nuanced. With a grid penalty already looming for Sunday's main race, the Briton had little to lose. Running split specifications also allows Mercedes to gather crucial comparative data that they were unable to collect the previous weekend.
Telemetry analysis shows that the new package offers a higher performance ceiling in terms of outright pace, but extracting that maximum requires significantly more effort from the driver behind the wheel.
"Kimi felt that seventh was the absolute maximum achievable today," said Mercedes deputy team director Bradley Lord. "The balance with the new package is more erratic and far less stable than George's. The car struggles in the low-speed corners, where understeer forces a more aggressive throttle application. On entry into high-speed sections, the rear becomes quite nervous, which inevitably undermines driver confidence. It's simply much harder to drive with the new parts, and that showed in the lap times."
Between free practice and Sprint Qualifying, Mercedes mechanics switched Antonelli back to the older-specification front wing. However, a complete reversion to the previous aerodynamic configuration remains technically impossible. The updated package features an entirely redesigned sidepod concept, which necessitated repackaging the cooling system and ancillary components beneath the engine cover.
Furthermore, parc fermé regulations rule out such wholesale alterations. Although parc fermé conditions are temporarily lifted between the Sprint and qualifying for the main race, the narrow three-hour window is nowhere near enough time to carry out work of that magnitude.
"We have to stick with what we have for this weekend," Lord confirmed. "There is no way to revert to the old configuration during the race weekend, nor can we change the chassis. That would require at least two days of work. We will try to extract the maximum from it and hopefully find a more stable baseline setup for Kimi. That was precisely the experiment we consciously decided to run here."
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