While workꦬ is advanced on Mercedes’ 2024 challenger as the team focuses their efforts on closing the gap to Red Bull over the winter, development 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 impor𒀰tance goes beyond immediate performance gains. 

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

“But it i🃏s mostly a useful thing because it’s a bellwether for whether we’re on the right track.

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

Mercedes’ 2022 and 2023 campaigns have been hampered by their trouble♉d and inconsistent W13 and W14 cars, prompting a fundamental desi🐻gn change for next season. 

Allison said Mercedes now have🎃 a “very clear idea of what we need to put right”. 

“🐠I think that much of what ails us now is reasonably well-understood and we’re working to fix that,” he explained. 

“I feel like all of us got a pretty clear-sighted view of what 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 makes the next years fun, very excitin🦩g to look forward to, and actually this period of the year extremely enjoyable."