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

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

Shovlin also revealed the weaknesses Mercedes are sti♋ll 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෴ mahbx.com.

“We saw that in Budapest, we saw that in Austria. Our gap on racepace in Budapest was smaller. So ܫI think we've made we've made progress there over the sequence of these recen🎉t races. If you looked at Silverstone though, we were competitive.

“I think the main weaknesses is that, but then everyone's trying to develop their c🌜ars. If you're not developing at a faster rate﷽ than the others, then you will quite quickly slip backwards.

“So there's always𒅌 there's always going to be a focus just on how much developmen🔯t 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 keep delivering performance from the wind tunnel, from our vehicle d𓂃ynamics gr💙oup and mechanical design group.

“They're going to continue to be able to bring performance into the l꧃ast 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 disappointing start to the 2024 season, Mercedes have enjoyed a competitive resur🐷gence of late, winning three of the four races prior to the summer shutdown.

When asked by mahbx.com if Mercedes plan to continue their aggressive 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 develop🥂ment. We’re💝 flat out trying to find performance.

“Later on in the year, there will h✨ave to be discussions 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 front𒊎 next year. So we're always going to make decis⭕ions 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 current car to next year's car.

“I think probably every team has already started working on next year's car. But how rapidl🧸y 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 versa.

“So it’s not like the challenge we’ll have in 2026🎀, where it’s a completely differ🐎ent beast.”

Shovlin admitted Mercede💜s are yet to make som🍸e 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 does the gearbox stay the sam𒉰e?,” he explained.

“The reality is you probably can't changꦺ▨e everything. We're at a stage now where we're trying to evaluate those 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 evolution 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 th🍬en have to recover. I don’t think many peop🌟le will be doing that.”