Mercedes-AMG F1 W15 E Performance Race Car

Mercedes unveiled the W15 on 14 February 2024 at Silverstone — the same circuit where it would deliver Lewis Hamilton's first Grand Prix win in 945 days. The car was Mercedes' fourth attempt to claw back to the front of the grid after the 2022 ground-effect regulation change ended its eight-year run of constructors' titles. Technical Director James Allison, who had returned from a strategic-leadership role to lead the technical group again in 2023, called the W15 the team's most ambitious project of the regulation era. The car switched from pull-rod to push-rod front suspension, reshaped the sidepods, and moved the cockpit further back at Hamilton's long-running request.

Performance arrived in waves. The opening rounds were tentative, but a major upgrade package introduced around Imola pushed the car back into win contention. George Russell took victory at the Austrian Grand Prix on 30 June 2024 — Mercedes' first win since the 2022 São Paulo GP. A week later at Silverstone, Hamilton won his home Grand Prix from third on the grid, ending a winless run that stretched back to Saudi Arabia 2021. He followed it with victory at Spa-Francorchamps the next race weekend, although the win was inherited after Russell's car was disqualified for being underweight. Russell then closed the team's account with a wet-weather victory at the Las Vegas Grand Prix in November.

The W15's broader narrative was governed by a single decision made before it had even turned a wheel. On 1 February 2024 — two weeks before the car's launch — Mercedes confirmed that Hamilton would join Ferrari for 2025 on a multi-year deal. The W15 became, in effect, the running farewell tour for a partnership that produced six drivers' titles (2014–2020) and dominated the second half of the V6 turbo-hybrid era. By the time Hamilton stood on the Spa podium, his Mercedes future was already counted in races, not seasons.

Mercedes finished the year fourth in the constructors' championship behind McLaren, Ferrari and Red Bull — its lowest finish since 2012 — but with four wins, four poles, four fastest laps and nine podiums. In late August 2024, the team confirmed Andrea Kimi Antonelli, the Italian teenager who had been its protégé since karting and its W15 test driver across the year, as Hamilton's 2025 replacement. He was 17 years old at the announcement.