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Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin feels matching McLaren’s remarkable development gains this season is “a stretch target”.
Following the arrival of a significant upgrade package spread over the Austrian and British Grands Prix, McLaren emerged as the second-quickest team.
It allowed Lando Norris to score back-to-back podiums for the first time in his career as the Briton finished runner-up to Red Bull’s Max Verstappen at Silverstone and then a fortnight later in Hungary.
In the changeable conditions across the Belgian Grand Prix weekend, the MCL60 was again considerably impressive on Friday and Saturday, with Oscar Piastri converting second on the grid for the sprint into another second place for the team in the short race.
Although the main event was problematic for McLaren, with Piastri retiring on lap one after a first-corner collision with Carlos Sainz in his Ferrari, and Norris struggling on the tyres in the first two stints as the conditions did not favour the car, McLaren’s gains of late have still been considerably impressive.
In contrast, Mercedes has stalled in its progress following an initially positive reaction from its own updates that were introduced in Monaco, and which came to the fore for the following race in Spain.
Addressing whether it would be possible to make the kind of leap seen by McLaren, Shovlin said: “We’re working hard to try and move forward.
“I think the step McLaren made was pretty impressive. You can see that they’ve changed a fair bit on their car.
“For us, we do need to close that gap to Red Bull. We’re still developing the car. Whether or not we could find the half a second that they (McLaren) look to have found, I don’t know. That’d be a stretch target.”
After opting to change its development path early in the season after recognising the course it had taken from the start of last year was the wrong one following the introduction of new aerodynamic regulations, Mercedes notably brought in a new frong wing, floor, and sidepods for Monaco.
Given the nature of the circuit, the updates could not be truly verified until the following race at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya where Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were second and third.
That was expected to be the launchpad for Mercedes to start to reel in Red Bull but that has failed to materialise.
According to Shovlin, one of the reasons is that “the gains change from track to track”.
He added: “The front end of the car is a bit more coherent, a bit stronger now so we’re having to work to balance that.
“But it does look to have gone in the right direction, and our correlation over the last year has been strong in that we make bits and we race them, we’re not putting kits on and off trying to decide whether we’ve done the right thing.
“However, look at where Aston Martin were at the start of the year and then where they’ve been in some of the recent races. That’s only because other people are developing very quickly.
“It’s difficult to gauge the progress when you just look at how the teams stack up. But the fact is, you can see those moves where people do bring updates.
“We just need to work to try and improve the development rate but the focus for us is making sure we can challenge Red Bull or whoever it is at the front next year.
“So it’s a case of balancing that bigger goal with what we can do on this car and also learning with this car because if you don’t change the car, you don’t learn a lot. So a lot of the development is about learning for the future.”
