Mercedes has emerged victorious from the last four races, but they are still facing a serious problem.

Andrew Shovlin, Director of Mercedes’ trackside engineering, has acknowledged that his team may require multiple upgrade packages to address the issue of the W15’s tires overheating. This would mean that Lewis Hamilton’s tenure with the Silver Arrows would come to an end on the solution date.

For Mercedes, the 2024 campaign has been a wild ride. With the fourth-fastest car at the beginning of the year, the Brackley-based team was closer to Aston Martin than it was to the top three competitors.

Every week, Hamilton and teammate George Russell were clearly frustrated, but after the Monaco Grand Prix, something clicked, and Mercedes started to realize the W15’s potential.

Between them, Hamilton and Russell won three Grand Prix races in the six races held before the summer shutdown, two of which were won by outright pace. Mercedes is now a weekly winner, despite the fact that they are still facing some serious issues.

Shovlin gave an explanation of the team’s current state, saying, “I think at tracks like Silverstone, we had a very stable rear end.” We were unstable in Budapest and Austria. All of that can be attributed to the fact that we appear to be running our tires hotter than the rest.

“We know we need to work on that area. We’ve got plans to do that, but that’s not the sort of problem you can fix with a single aero update. It will be the result of quite a few developments to try and get on top of it.”

Fears that the W15 could be generating less downforce than competitors McLaren and Red Bull and more rear sliding as a result of Mercedes’ inability to control their tyre temperature issues have been highlighted. That theory, however, is refuted by their speed in Spa.

“If you looked at Silverstone, we couldn’t have pulled away in the first stint if our car wasn’t significantly different from the McLaren or Red Bull in terms of downforce,” Shovlin elaborated.

“So , we don’t believe that to be the main reason behind the problem. When it comes to targeting a certain drag level and the resulting downforce, people are currently operating their cars within a very small range.

So, I believe that in that sense, we’re there or almost there. It goes without saying that this is one of the most important areas of development that will never stop. Still, a lot of our attention is focused on the matter of the rear tire temperature”.