Leaving behind a tough weekend in Austria, where the Silver Arrows couldn’t find the pace to beat Max Verstappen’s Red Bull, Mercedes is hopeful to close the gap with the Milton Keynes team by introducing some improvements.

“We have a reasonable number of things that are going to make our car faster in the coming races, and let's hope they prove sufficient,” James Allison told to the F1 Nation Podcast.

Just after the Styrian GP Toto Wolff had commented on the matter, stating there wouldn’t be any further upgrades to the W12 as the team is fully concentrated on developing the 2022 car.

“I don't think those two things are at odds with each other. And I don’t think Toto has said precisely that,” clarified Allison.

“What Toto points out is that next year's rules are a big and hairy affair, and that they demand a huge amount of our attention. So most of the focus of our factory has switched over to next year, the performance discovery for next year.”

Nevertheless they still have some upgrades that were developed before switching the focus onto 2022.

“And furthermore, it isn't all of the factory. And furthermore, we're only one of two factories, there's also the PU factory and there is a little bit more to come also from the PU.”

According to the Technical Director Mercedes will introduce some changes to the aerodynamic side, the Power Unit “and just a few things that are not quite as tidy as we would wish, that we still have got the opportunity to put right while this season is still very much alive and hot.”

The team has been finding things quite difficult in terms of performance gain. A struggle that Allison believes is accentuated by the new floor regulations introduced this season.

“Ever since the rule changes that were introduced aerodynamically for looking after the tyres, we have found it hellishly hard to find the sort of performance gain rate that we did previously prior to those rules," he said. 

"So that has made our life trickier than we wished it to be.”