Ferrari, McLaren and Mercedes are set to accelerate their development push amid close championship battle

With the field having been closely-matched across the opening stages of the current season, three of the top four teams – Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren – are expected to push forward some of their upgrades to the next weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix.

Ferrari have started the season in a strong form which culminated in a win for Carlos Sainz in Melbourne, followed by Charles Leclerc’s emotional victory in Monaco.

However, the Scuderia struggled for pace in Montreal with Leclerc and Sainz having failed to make the cut into Q3 in qualifying before retiring from the race on Sunday.

The team elected against spreading out its upgrades, and brought a significant upgrades package in Imola instead, overhauling the entire SF-24 in one step. It has emerged that the Italian team will bring further upgraded parts to Silverstone and Hungary, but team boss Fred Vasseur has now suggested that his outfit might bring some upgrades forward to Barcelona.

“What is true is that we are at the point now where we will have to speed up the development. Imagine that someone could bring an upgrade one race [earlier] when you have three teams in one tenth, you can jump from P5 to P1.

“It means that we’ll have to speed up the time to market, it will be crucial.

“But we also have to pay attention that we are now chasing the last hundredths. It’s not anymore a five-tenth upgrade. It means that you also have to be sure that what you are bringing is working. It will be the key factor for the next couple of events,” said Vasseur.

Mercedes have endured a different fate to Ferrari so far in 2024. The Brackley-based outfit delivered an encouraging performance during pre-season testing in Bahrain, but failed to match the leading trio of Red Bull, McLaren and Ferrari in the opening stages of the season.

However, the team started to bring upgrades to its W15 in Imola, followed by further developments in Monaco and Montreal. The heavily-upgraded car enabled George Russell to secure the team’s first pole position in 2024 before the Briton went on to claim his and his team’s first podium finish in the race.

Mercedes are expected to bring a new floor in Barcelona which had been originally planned to make its debut in Silverstone. Technical director James Allison claimed that his team needs to bring upgrades at a more often rate than its rivals if it wants to put itself in contention for race victories.

“I  also know what we’ve got coming. I also know what  we’re planning to further improve the car. And our  challenge is just to keep those upgrades arriving at a pace that the others can’t keep up with. 

“And in doing that, just bullying our car to the   front by virtue of the effort made by everybody  here over the coming weeks and months to get the car so that it can have its Montreal weekend or  better at any track that we face in the future,” Allison commented.

Elsewhere, McLaren have also indicated that they will bring further upgrades in the coming races. The Woking-based team focussed on comprehensive upgrade packages in the past instead of introduing smaller updates.

Team boss Andrea Stella confirmed that his outfit will equip its MCL38 with upgraded parts in the coming races, but they will be of smaller extent compared to the development step that the team achieved in Miami.

Regarding the upcoming races, Stella revealed: “For the coming races, we will have some upgrades, but they won’t be a single kind of big upgrade like we have seen over the last 12 months.

“This is more some individual components where we found a little bit of performance and rather than waiting to deploy everything together once ready we take it track side. So I won’t say what but we will see some new stuff coming over the few coming races.”