F1: Mercedes bring more upgrades to Spa

Mercedes are bringing upgrades to the W14 for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix to placate Lewis Hamilton, who can’t stand losing.

The German manufacturer introduced a major revision to their troubled W14 car at the Monaco Grand Prix, before bringing another big package to the British Grand Prix at Silverstone in early July, but in the race Max Verstappen keeps beating Hamilton like a drum.

Toto Wolff: “We will be bringing updates this weekend as part of our ongoing development program. We hope this is another step forward in improving the W14”.

“Hungary was a weekend of highs and lows,” Wolff said ahead of this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix. “Our pace was strong on Saturday and Sunday, but we didn’t maximize that across the weekend.

“Lewis produced a brilliant lap to take pole position. However, on Sunday, we were too conservative with some of our decisions and ultimately missed out on a podium. George meanwhile was compromised in qualifying but drove a strong race from P18 to take P6.

“We also encountered cooling limitations across both cars; we likely had the second-fastest car, but we must execute better if we are to deliver our full potential. Nevertheless, we scored good points with both drivers, and consolidated our P2 Championship position.

“We will be aiming to turn those learnings into actions for this weekend. Spa-Francorchamps is a classic venue and a true challenge for both the cars and drivers, especially in the sprint format with such limited practice time on a long and challenging lap.

“We will be bringing updates this weekend as part of our ongoing development program. We hope this will be another small step forward in improving the W14.

“As we have seen at many races this year though, it is hard to predict where we will be relative to our competitors. Wherever the true pace of our car is here, we want to maximize the outcome in this final race before the summer shutdown.”

Dr. Helmut Marko said after the Hungarian GP that Verstappen was not really trying hard and still won by 33 seconds.

Barring any trouble, especially since we are in for a wet weekend, it’s likely that Verstappen will continue to play “Wipe-Out” on his drum set.