Mercedes introduced several upgrades at the US Grand Prix, including changes to the front wing, a re-profiled upper wishbone fairing, an additional vane element on the floor edge wing, and a reworked inboard floor fence. 

As circuit-specific adjustments, the team brought to Austin a revised sidepod inlet and added cooling exits to the rear suspension.

Despite both cars fighting for pole in Friday's sprint qualifying and the upgrades appearing to perform well, Saturday brought a harsh reality, with Lewis Hamilton's early qualifying exit and George Russell's heavy crash in Q3.

Russell’s shunt left his upgrades damaged, leading to a switch to the old-spec parts and a pit lane start as a result of the alterations. That moved Hamilton slightly up the starting grid, placing him in seventeenth position.

However, on just the third lap of the race, the seven-time world champion spun out in Turn 19 and got trapped in the gravel, resulting in an early retirement.

Hamilton believes that, given the car's behavior, it was likely he would encounter an incident that would end his race.

“I wasn’t even pushing at that point; I was literally just trying to get going and bringing the tyres up to temperature,” explained the Briton to Motorsport.com.

“The car started bouncing, the left front started bouncing and the rear end just came round. It was the same as George yesterday.”

Reflecting on the similarity of his and Russell's incidents, Hamilton felt the team should evaluate the effects of the new package it brought to the event. Also pointing out that his teammate managed to recover to sixth place in the race, probably thanks to not running the upgrades.

“In P1 I had the same thing.

“I had the spin in Turn 3, which is so rare. I have never spun in Turn 3 in all the years I’ve been here.

“I was just saying about George obviously having the same problem yesterday, he has gone back to the old-spec car and is looking good out there, so maybe there is something with the new upgrade.

“We will investigate as much as we can, and after today we will get the data and see if we are going to be on the old or the new spec next week,” he concluded.