Allison: We hope upgrade will rectify underlying balance

The eight-time Formula 1 Constructors' Champions endured a tough weekend during the Chinese GP, as they lost their way setting up their car, ruining it after a decent performance in the Sprint Race which Lewis Hamilton finished second. He was ninth in the Grand Prix.

This weekend's Miami GP will be the second Sprint weekend of the 2024 F1 season, and Mercedes are bringing an upgrade package for the W15 hoping the improve their performance after "hemorrhaging" lap time in China in the long and high-speed corners - something Allison pointed out.

In a video on Mercedes' YouTube channel, Allison said: "The challenge that we face in the coming races is to try and move both the set up of the car and also the pieces that we bring to the car so that [the balance] is improved.

"We've got upgrade packages coming to the car but also components that we hope will rectify the underlying balance that is causing us difficulty.

"Much as it's painful to talk in this way after a weekend like China, I just have to remember that there'll be races in the future when we've executed those things, when we're back more on the front foot and when we're progressing where the pleasure of talking about it will be massive and that day can't come soon enough," he reckoned.

Despite all the simulations, Allison is aware that the best way to understand their W15 is with the time it runs on the track.

He said: "Every weekend you go to you learn things. It's one of the truisms of F1, it is a learning race and although you have a factory full of tools, you have a load of computational power, a load of people who are thinking about it, there is no place to learn about the car better than with the car at the track doing what it's designed to do.

"We head from China, one of the most famously front limited circuits to Miami, a track that is more in the rear limited end of the spectrum and our challenge will be to make sure we don't try and replay China at a Miami that is a very, very different beast and wants different things from the car than China will.

"We face the enjoyment of another Sprint weekend with this second go of having two bites of the cherry and we definitely learnt during this weekend that if you're going to be ambitious, be ambitious in the Sprint race and then tune it down for the main race, rather than the opposite way around.

"Hopefully we'll land a car in a better place, that the upgrades that we're going to bring to Miami serve us well in a grid that in Qualifying at least is really close.

"Around the part of the battle we're fighting a few hundredths can make a difference sometimes and a couple of tenths would make all the difference in the world. So looking forward to seeing how that all plays out," Allison concluded.