The Mercedes W13, a single-seater famous for being the 'kangaroo' that put an end to the Brackley team's winning streak in 2022, had 65 points to its credit after the first three races of the season. Twelve months after the W14 I leave Melbourne (still the third race of the year) at 56 points, this year the haul after the Albert Park weekend is 26 points. In short, the trend is not the best, and the numbers only confirm what we see on the track and what the drivers report.
Ever since the tendency to talk about an operating 'window' took hold in Formula 1, it seems that there are no longer any badly designed single-seaters. When a car doesn't work we are talking about a car that is able to express its theoretical potential only in a very limited condition. The result, however, is the same, the Grands Prix are still contested in the real world, where there are temperatures that vary, more or less intense wind, traffic and more or less aggressive asphalts.
The accident of George Russell, Mercedes W15, at the conclusion of the Australian GP
The balance of the trip to Melbourne was affected by the double retirement due to technical reasons (Hamilton's power unit) and the accident involving Russell, who in any case would not have gone beyond the seventh final position. A double 'zero' which made Mercedes slip to fourth place in the Constructors' standings, behind Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
What worries the team's technicians is the unpredictability of the car's behavior. After a Friday defined by Hamilton as among the most difficult since he joined Mercedes, the FP3 session (with fourth and fifth positions for Russell and Lewis, one tenth behind the leader Leclerc) made people believe that the problems were behind them. Three hours later, in qualifying, there was a cold shower again, with Russell seventh, more than eight tenths behind Verstappen and Hamilton sensationally out of Q3. The race then confirmed the results of the qualifications, the W15 in terms of pace was always very far from where it would like to be.
Toto Wolff disappointed with Mercedes' start to the season
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
“If I said I felt optimistic I would be lying – commented Toto Wolff – the race highlighted our problems in a brutal way. In some phases we clearly lacked the pace, then in the end it seemed to go a little better, but we are certainly not where we would like to be. We started the season convinced that this car was better than the previous one, but if we look at last year we see that some of the opponents who were a long way behind us are now much further ahead. I would like to punch myself in the nose, but on the other hand we have examples in front of us that confirm how things can change if we work well. But I cannot deny that this moment is very, very difficult for us.”
Everyone is under scrutiny, Wolff himself has asked himself questions about his actions. “I've always said that if someone has better ideas than mine they should let me know, I'm the first to be interested in turning this team around as quickly as possible. We have a technical problem, not a philosophical or organizational one, we don't understand some of the machine's behaviors that we would have understood in the past.”
“We checked a lot of things, we weren't sure about our suspension, we weren't sure about the stiffness of our gearbox mount, we had a steering rack that was vibrating, and all these things are fine today. The problem basically is that what we see in wind tunnel is not correlated with what happens on the track. It's not a question of resources, in the Williams days I knew what was missing, but here I don't think we need anything more than what we have. We know that something happens on the single-seater that isn't we can see, it's like an on-off switch.”
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
The engineers are subjected to a tour de force reminiscent of 2022, when at the Brackley headquarters the activity to cure the W13 from 'bouncing' pain was almost 24 hours a day. Now, however, the problem is more subtle. In Melbourne qualifying, all the top teams lowered the results of the FP3 session by seven tenths, the two Mercedes remained on the same times.
In Jeddah Hamilton and Russell had complained about the behavior of the car on the fast corners, in Australia the biggest difficulties were the slow sections. The work is focused on the cross-country, confirmation came from the choice to bring the first specification seen in the tests in Bahrain back to Melbourne, solving some of the problems and triggering others.
“It's clear that we have a lot to work on – confirmed chief engineer Andrew Shovlin – we need to keep our heads down, face the challenges one by one and aim to take a step forward already in Suzuka”.
It won't be easy. The 'confidence' bonus rightly earned thanks to the longest winning streak in the entire history of Formula 1 is now exhausted. For the third consecutive year, Mercedes is fighting in behind positions and what is most worrying is the absence of signs of recovery.
At the end of 2024 the engineer Simone Resta will arrive in Brackley together with other new signings seen as weight reinforcements. But as we have already seen on other occasions in Formula 1, sometimes the 'reinforcement' is a soft way to start a reshuffle, and in light of the results achieved by the team starting from 2022, it now appears indispensable.
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