How Mercedes turned their car around to produce a Hamilton win

Mercedes have gone from fighting for points, to winning two consecutive races in Austria and Britain. In Austria, this was the first time since 2022 that the team had won a race, and at Silverstone, Lewis Hamilton ended his 945 days streak without a win after taking home the victory for the ninth time at the circuit. The team now sit fourth in the Constructors and are beginning to close the gap between themselves and McLaren. It seems that the changes they have made to their car have been successful, with team boss Toto Wolff making it clear that there are still more to come. 

On the F1 Nation podcast, Shovlin explained how the team had been working to make these changes: "It has been a fairly long road, but it has been a road with pretty linear progress on it. From our side, we're looking at the gaps to all the cars in front of us, race pace, qualifying, and we've been chipping away at this from race one in Bahrain," he said. "There were a few notable problems we had to get on top of. We were bouncing really badly in the high-speed corners in Jeddah. We've suffered a lot with rear tire overheating, which we wouldn't say that we've solved yet, but we've certainly got it much more under control." 

What has changed for Mercedes?

The Silver Arrows showed their first step towards improvement at the Canadian Grand Prix when George Russell set the same lap time as Max Verstappen in qualifying, with the Brit starting on pole. Russell managed to finish third on the podium, with Hamilton finishing behind in fourth. The team are now just 74 points behind McLaren in the Constructors, with Russell and Hamilton in seventh and eighth in the Driver's standings.

Shovlin remains clear on what has changed for the team: "I think the team has got much more focused. The sort of performance machine is working really well. Everyone is looking for performance in every area," he explained. "I think part of the reason that we've been able to make relative progress against everyone else is just that all the key performance areas of the business are delivering, not just the wind tunnel, but we're delivering on the mechanical side, we're delivering in terms of weight, in terms of getting a car that works around a range of conditions, managing the tires better."

"It's a lot of fun, and in a way, this challenge, there's elements of this that are more fun than all those years of winning, because when you're winning everything, you don't have the contrast. So if you say, how have we done it? It's that we've got a group here in Brackley and a group in Brixworth that are just hugely motivated to get Mercedes back to winning championships," he concluded.