Mercedes plans to bring back abandoned floor for Dutch GP

Mercedes says the upgraded floor that it abandoned in Belgium last week will likely return after the Formula 1 summer break at Zandvoort.

The German manufacturer introduced its updated floor as part of its push to lift the performance of its W15 car.

However, after a tricky opening day of practice at Spa-Francorchamps where the team was left confused about its lack of pace, it reverted to its previous floor specification for the remainder of the F1 weekend.

Having had a good hit rate so far this season with upgrades it has brought to the car doing what was expected, the decision to ditch its new floor prompted fears that it could have hit a point of trouble.

Other teams like Ferrari, RB and Aston Martin have seen their seasons stall when upgrades they brought did not deliver what was expected – and it took some time for them to unpick their problems.

But Mercedes is confident that it is not about to suffer a similar fate, as it remains adamant that the issues it faced on the Friday in Belgium were not related to the floor.

Instead, as team principal Toto Wolff has explained, it believes its Friday woes had more to do with mechanical aspects of how it was setting up its car to deal with the middle sector of the Spa track.

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Wolff said that Mercedes would bring the new floor back for the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, and would conduct a thorough analysis of its performance to be sure that there were no problems with it.

“I think we made a drastic change in order to recover some of the performance, but we believe it wasn't the floor,” said Wolff about the plans for the upgrade.

“It will be quite interesting when we put everything on the car in Zandvoort and correlate, and see what it does. Then we can be sure whether it's the mechanical bit that we thought, or if there are few interactions aerodynamically and mechanically that didn't work.”

Mercedes is coming off the back of three wins in the last four races, having triumphed in the Austrian, British and Belgian Grands Prix.

While that run of form has set up a possibility of a charge forward in the constructors’ championship, Wolff thinks it too early to get carried away with how things could play out.

“I think we need to remain both feet on the ground,” he explained. “The swings of performance, you see a trend definitely that's positive on our side. With some other teams, you see a negative trend.

“But I don't think we should really pre-empt how the second half of the season is going to go. I think it's a tough fight, and there are four teams that are giving it everything.

“I think we can be carefully optimistic. But we've got to prove it. There are 10 races to go.”