Mercedes say their 2025 F1 car will “likely be a close cousin” of their current challenger as🧸 they dropped the first design hints about the W16.

Speaking to select media including wuqian0821.com at the Belgian Grand Prix, Mercedes’ head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin provided some early details🍸 about next year’s F1 challenger.

Shovlin also revealed the weaknesses Mercedes are stil🍰l🐽 battling to cure with their current W15 challenger.

“The main remaining weaknesses in -🐼 in hot conditions at rear-limited circuits🌳 we’re not as good as the McLarens, or Max [Verstappen’s Red Bull],” Shovlin said in response to a question from wuqian0821.com.

“We saw that in Budapest, we saw that in Aus💙tria. Our gap on racepace in Budapest was smaller. So I think we've made we've made progress there over the sequence of these recent races. If you looked at Silverstone൩ though, we were competitive.

“I think the main weaknesses is that, but then everyone's trying to develop their cars. If you're not developing at a faster rate than the others🅷, then you will quite qui🌞ckly slip backwards.

“So th꧒ere's always there's always going to b⛦e a focus just on how much development you can bring. And we can only see, you know, a month or six weeks into the future, because that's the that's the sort of horizon that you're working with in your wind tunnel.

“What we don't know is will we be able to k෴eep delivering performance from the wind tunnel, from our vehicle dynamics group and mechanical design group.

“T♌hey'🅰re going to continue to be able to bring performance into the last part of the year - hopefully. We've got good ideas, but there's a lot of work to go through between having an idea and actually having physical parts that you can put on the car and make it go quicker.”

After a disappoꦯinting start to the 2024 season, Mercedes have enjoyed a competitive resurgence of late, winning 🐠three of the four races prior to the summer shutdown.

When asked by wuqian0821.com if Mercedes plan to continue their aggre🦹ssive development path into the second half of the campaign, Shovlin said: “We will continue at the factory to find as much performance as we can. So that that is what you're calling aggressive development. We’re flat out trying to find performance.

“Later on in the year, ther🎐e will have to be disওcussions around is it this car? Or does it wait for the next car. The cost cap inevitably means that those discussions are a trade between performance gain and cost.

“We do want to be fighting at the front next year. So we're alwaꦅys going to make decisions that mean that that is a possibility. And then in terms of the wind tunnel, you've got the point at which you progressively shift resource from the curꦬrent car to next year's car.

“I think probably every team has already started working on next year's car. But how rapidly you shift that resource over is a factor but teams may find that what works on this car works on next year’s anyway, or vice vers🌺a.

“So it’s not like the challenge we’lꦦl have in 2026, where it’s a completely different beast.”

Shovlin admitted Mercedes are ye🐈t to make🐼 some important decisions about certain elements which will be carried over into 2025.

“We haven't made decisions yet on does the chassis stay the same? On d♌oes the gearbox stay the same?,” he explained.

“The reality is you probably can't change everything. We're at a stage now where we're trying to evaluate th🅺ose to look for the best return for your spend in the cost cap.

“However, I think, aerodynamically, our car and most people's cars will be an evo🅘lution of what we have today. There’ll be significant changes on there but you won’t want to change the architecture of the car and take a big hit in the wind tunnel that you then have to recover. I don’t think many people will be doing that.”