Mercedes plan final W13 upgrade package for Austin

The upcoming race in Austin will mark the final effort Mercedes will out into their troublesome W13 which despite the hype around its zero-pod design, turned out to be a handful, not to mention it vicious bouncing tendencies.

Mercedes have done some work to improve the car, but it definitely improved but was never consistent as its performance tends to yo-yo from one track to another.

Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin said of the W13 upgrade; he said: "It’s our final step of aero development and that will hopefully give us a bit more performance.

"But importantly with every step, we are learning more and more and that learning we can carry into next year," he added. "So that’s part of it, also there is a few bits where we have taken some weight out of components that will hopefully get the car closer to the weight limit."

With the 2022 Silver Arrow being awfully dubious, Shovlin admits it will be hard to predict how the upgrade will perform, and how close will it bring them to the front pack.

"It’s very difficult for us to predict where we are going to be," he said. "In Singapore Lewis was awfully close to pole position, yet in Suzuka both cars had a big gap to the front.

"Now, our race pace has been reasonably strong, so, if we can make a step hopefully, we can get into the fight with the Ferraris and the Red Bulls but qualifying for us is the really difficult one to predict at the moment.

"But as I said a lot of it is about learning and we are certainly going to give it our best shot in the final four races," the Briton maintained.

The Circuit of the Americas (COTA), the venue of the next grand prix is infamous for its uneven bumpy surface, something that has pushed the organizers to resurface certain parts of it.

Shovlin believes COTA will be a challenge for Mercedes; he said: "It's a tricky circuit and it was a tricky circuit for us last year.

"It was very bumpy, there was a lot of overheating as well from the tyres, and we weren’t performing as well as Red Bull were on the softer tyres," he explained.

"They have done some resurfacing so hopefully those issues with the bumps are a bit less. But what's very hard this year is to really know where you are going to be on the circuit before you've gone there.

"We will not really be going to make any predictions about where we are going to perform, we just need to go there on Friday, see what kind of issues we have, and then see whether we can solve those with set-up," the Mercedes engineer concluded.

Mercedes finished the 2022 Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka fifth and eighth with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell respectively.