Mercedes sticks with new floor for remainder of Dutch GP weekend
Mercedes has decided to stick with its new floor element for the remainder of the Dutch Grand Prix weekend, despite dismissing the element after initial concerns last time out in Belgium.
The Brackley squad had faced a challenging Friday at Spa marked by balance and straight-line speed issues the compelled to revert to its car’s previous specification floor.
However, despite this setback, an analysis of the data collected at Spa indicated that the new design was indeed an improvement, even if its potential wasn't immediately apparent.
To confirm their findings, they split the specification of their cars in Friday’s first practice session at Zandvoort, with George Russell running the new floor and Lewis Hamilton using the old one.
By the second practice session, the team was sufficiently convinced of the new floor's benefits and ran both its cars with the update, with Russell topping the FP2 session.
Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' trackside engineering director, expressed satisfaction with the initial results.
"Today was an encouraging start to the weekend," he said. "The conditions in FP1 were particularly tricky with very strong winds and heavy rain making it difficult to get a good read on the updated floor we brought to Spa.
"Nevertheless, what we saw looks in line with expectations, so we'll continue the weekend with that fitted to both cars.”
The decision to keep the new floor on both cars comes as Mercedes is gearing up for another closely contested race on Sunday, based on Friday’s performance gaps between the Silver Arrows outfit and its McLaren and Red Bull rivals.
Russell acknowledged the challenging conditions during Friday's running but emphasized the strong performance of the car with the new floor element.
“It was difficult out there due to the windy conditions,” he said. “It is perhaps the windiest conditions I can remember driving an F1 car in over the past few years.
Nevertheless, the car was performing really well and the updated floor we brought to Spa seemed to be working effectively.
“The pack at the front seems to be quite close once again. We expect to be facing another fascinating battle across the rest of the weekend for the podium spots.”
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