Mercedes Vegas performance ‘the key’ for 2025 car design – Lewis Hamilton is leaving his Mercedes family to conclude his F1 career with Ferrari. Yet on Sunday in Las Vegas, the silver arrows team were rampant with George Russell romping to victory and Lewis Hamilton scything through the field from P10 to finish second behind his team mate.

This was Mercedes first 1-2 since Sao Paulo in 2022 although the tense battle between the pair to the line in Brazil, was missing in the desert evening in Nevada. The result was no surprise given the team had topped the timesheets all weekend.

Despite being quickest in both Thursday practice sessions, Hamilton was cautious given Mercedes have repeatedly gone backwards during the course of a race weekend this year. Speculation n the paddock suggested the team may be running the cars with lower fuel levels than others, but Russell’s pole in qualifying put pay to all that talk.

 

 

 

Mercedes dominate Las Vegas weekend

“We’ve had a couple of good Fridays where there wasn’t much grip and the car was sliding around,” Wolff told Austrian broadcaster ORF. “That’s why it’s difficult to judge. Don’t count your chickens before they hatch!”

Yet Wolff’s caution on Friday turned to elation the following day as once again the silver arrows of George Russell claimed pole position. The only disappointment for the team was that Hamilton had two scruffy laps in Q3 and was set to start the Grand Prix in P10.

The dominance of the Mercedes W15 in Las Vegas now leaves Toto Wolff optimistic that lessons can be learned and translated into a more competitive outfit for 2025. This year the Pirelli tyres have been key to the ebb and flow of the front runners with Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes all putting on dominant displays.

The Mercedes boss admitted the entire team was surprised at the dominance of their cars with the Austrian observing the cool nights in the desert as key to their success. Cooler temperatures clearly mitigated the rear tyre overheating issues which have plagued Russell and Hamilton for most of the year.

Mercedes cryptic team orders deny Hamilton win

 

 

 

Cool temperatures favour W15

“It’s cold. I think that clearly you can correlate where we’ve been strong,” Wolff explained to assembled media in the paddock. “We’ve been strong in Silverstone, we’ve been strong in Spa, and then here in Las Vegas. I think it’s just keeping the car in its sweet spot, the tires in the optimum window.

“It shows that the car can be very, very quick. “We were two seconds quicker than our competition at times, when George was pushing, and for the rest of the day he was just managing his pace.”

Mercedes were the only team not to suffer tyre graining issues caused by the low grip surface. In fact the team experienced quite the opposite, as their cars slid around this improved the tyre temperatures without damaging the rubber.

Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc pressed hard from P2 attempting to take the lead from Russell but as the Monegasque later admitted this merely grained up his tyres causing him to fall back through the field.

Vettel returns

 

 

 

Leclerc admits ‘cooking’ his tyres

“I mean, I was very excited at the start [in] P2, then unfortunately everything started to go very quickly wrong, because I pushed too much on the tyres,” said Leclerc afterwards. “On the two other sets of hard we were very strong, but we lost too much on the first [set].”

Toto admits the team don’t fully understand their supremacy in Sin City but believes the vast amounts of data collected could unlock they key for their 2025 F1 car design.

“Yeah, strange,” said Toto. “We were capable of pushing whenever we wanted to. There was no graining period, neither on the medium, nor on the hard.

“Charles attempted a few times to put pressure on George, who he defended great.

“I don’t know what the outcome would have been of that, but he fell off [the cliff], Leclerc, after a few laps. He couldn’t hold the pace, but we didn’t ever see the sign of graining nor degradation.”

Bottas back to Mercedes

 

 

 

Sliding around helped Mercedes tyre temps

The sliding in Las Vegas had the opposite effect to the same break in traction when the temperatures are hotter as Wolff observed.

“When you break traction and it’s hot, then you kind of swing out of the window all the time,” he said. “And when you break traction here, that was actually helpful to keep the temperatures up at the time.

“So clearly, there is a pattern that some teams really love the cold and extract a lot of performance. And there are some teams that have been so strong when it was hot.”

In the heat of Singapore it was the McLaren of Lando Norris who were supreme, yet in Vegas they were clearly only the third quickest team. It was only the genius of Max Verstappen that meant Red Bull were able to finish ahead of the papaya liveried cars.

Norris refutes Verstappen McLaren claim

 

 

 

Hours of data to pour through

Whilst Mercedes can’t dictate the weather at each F1 weekend, they have several hours of data to analyse where they will gain a deeper understanding of the car’s performance and find areas for improvement for next year.

“This one is a really important result,” Wolff concluded. “You have fluctuations over the weekend, and then normally you can see we’ve been good here [in practice], then we’ve been not so good in that session.

“But here, every single session, we were ahead. So lots of good data that allow us to say at least we know what our sweet spot is, and this is where we need to be. “It’s then trying to find out how we can hit that target more often.”

Verstappen: I asked Norris to come to Red Bull

 

 

 

Russell bold claim and Norris slight

Speaking after his win in Las Vegas, Russell made the bold claim that he was the man to give Max Verstappen a run for his money, also hinting that Lando Norris would’ve done a better job this year.

“I just want to make sure we get in that fight now because it’s about time somebody gave him a proper fight,” he told Viaplay. “That’s my plan, that’s what I want to do.

“He’s a fierce competitor and Red Bull are doing amazing but this championship probably should’ve gone down to the wire. You could argue that Max probably wasn’t the favourite at one point and yet he wins it with races to go,” concluded Russell.

Verstappen out of pocket despite 4th title

 

 

 

Brundle cautions against Hamilton optimism

The second Formula One trip along the Strip in Las Vegas, was a triumph for Mercedes. They topped the timesheets in every session and despite Lewis Hamilton’s mistake in qualifying, the team earned a valuable 1-2 on the road to recovery.

However, the problem is neither the team nor the drivers and engineers knew why their car was so dominant in Sin City with the best explanation on offer being the winter temperatures suit the Mercedes W15.

George Russell led from pole and only briefly relinquished the lead to his team mate when pitting for fresh rubber. Lewis on the other hand did not have the perfect weekend. Two poor laps in qualifying saw the seven times champion start from P10… READ MORE