While work is adva𝔉nced on Mercedes’ 2024 challenger as the team focuses their efforts on closing the gap to Red Bull over the winter, devel♌opment on the W14 has not completely stopped. 

Mercedes will bring a new floor 🍬to this weekend’s US GP at Austin, but the upgrade’s importance goes beyondꦕ immediate performance gains. 

“Hopefully it will give us a bit of lapඣ time,” Mercedes technical director James Allison꧑ said at the Qatar Grand Prix. “That’s always a benefit.

“B♑ut it is mostly a useful thing because it’s a bellwether for whether we’re on the right track.

⭕“In lap time terms, it wil𒆙l be small. Useful, but don’t expect us to have leapt past Max [Verstappen].”

Me🗹rcedes’ 2022 and 2023 campaigns have been hampered by their troubled and inconsistent W13 and W14 cars, prompting a fundam🌺ental design change for next season. 

Allison said Mercedes now have a “very clear idea of wh🙈at we need to put right”. 

“I th♕ink that much of what ails us now is reasonably well𝕴-understood and we’re working to fix that,” he explained. 

“I feel like all of us got a pretty clear-sighted view of w✨hat we want to do with the car. This championship, while we haven’t made the really impressive progress that McLaren have, we have nevertheless been charting a path through the season that gives us a very clear 🉐idea of what we need to put right.

“So that ma🅷kes the next years fun, very exciting to look forward to, and actually this pꦉeriod of the year extremely enjoyable."