Rear suspension in the dock
Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin and Mercedes: this is the finishing order of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in which McLaren returned ahead of Mercedes with Oscar Piastri while in Bahrain George Russell succeeded despite overheating problems to stay in front of the two MCL38s. The Woking team is two points ahead of the one that provides it with the power unit and theMercedes Cup' will be one of the themes of the Australian Grand Prix in which Fernando Alonso's AMR24 will also be worth keeping an eye on.
A year ago Mercedes managed to finish second in the Constructors' standings ahead of Ferrari despite never winning a race and already in 2022 the comparison with the Scuderia from Maranello saw the latter clearly prevail 4 to 1. If in Ferrari they seem to have definitively taken the right path as regards the fundamental data correlation in Brackley, however, we are stumbling in the dark precisely in this respect.
According to what was reported in today's edition of The Corriere dello Sport There is a difference of one second between the data that emerges in the simulator and what is then found on the track. From times of virtual excellence we move on to the disappointment of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton who define the W15 as a car “undriveable” although it was created in a 'conventional' way, abandoning the concept behind the W13 and W14. Team principal Toto Wolff in Jeddah stressed that the fast corners are undoubtedly a problem given that in three corners in Saudi Arabia the Mercedes lost half a second. Gary Anderson even hypothesized that the problem for the house of the Three-Pointed Star is not having fully understood the ground effect.
The men under the command of James Allison are reflecting on whether the data could be responsible for the lack of correlation the rear suspension, a 'hereditary problem' that could even be decades old, but which in the first part of the turbo-hybrid era was masked by the overwhelming superiority of the power unit created in Brixworth. Frederic Vasseur underlined last summer that in F1 every single-seater carries with it the previous decade in terms of its DNA. Ferrari's new rear suspension was also promoted by customer Haas, while Mercedes is now wondering about its own in light of McLaren's performance.
#indiscretion #lying #simulator #Mercedes #crisis
