Toto Wolff recognizes a fundamental problem with the Mercedes W15

Over the past three years, the winters have followed one another and looked the same at Mercedes. Toto wolff, leader of the pack, mobilizes his technical teams, promises that the intrinsic problems of the previous car will be resolved, displays his optimism in the media, before acknowledging after two or three rounds the inefficiency of the package and the persistent structural problems. Unfortunately for fans of the brand with the star and Lewis Hamilton, 2024 seems to be no exception to the rule.

In 2022, the technical teams at Brackley wrongly thought that the porpoising phenomenon was the main cause of their recurring problems with rear axle instability. But by eradicating the rebound phenomenon, the problems with the rear were not resolved and 2023 was another complicated season, despite the final 2nd place in the Manufacturers' championship.

Lewis Hamilton complains of lack of pace in the rapids

Despite the changes made during last year at the head of the technical department, where the returning James Allison took over from Mike Elliott as technical director, Mercedes does not seem to have resolved all its fundamental concerns. However, the British brain assured us at the start of the season of his confidence in having notably resolved the problems of instability of the rear axle, an issue which Lewis Hamilton rightly complained about in Jeddah.

Toto 💬 "We believe we can turn this around. We believe that this organization can turn this around. I am 100% certain we can do so."

Converting a tough weekend into positive motivation for the weeks to come 💪 pic.twitter.com/MXb0x90G6e

—Mercedes-AMG PETRONAS F1 Team (@MercedesAMGF1) March 10, 2024

In Bahrain, Mercedes hid behind an engine cooling problem costing 4 to 5/10ths per lap to explain the 5th and 7th final places of its drivers, but in Jeddah, the limitations of the W15 turned out to be more structural , Lewis Hamilton once again complaining about the rear and reporting a big lack of pace in the fast curves.

“This car has potential, but we still need to add a good dose of performance to it, explained Lewis. Today the car was pretty good in the medium and low speed corners, but we were losing ground in the fast corners. The next races will be tricky, but we will make a lot of effort to improve as much as possible. I know everyone at the factory is going to get down to business and work as hard as they can.”

A disappointing observation at Mercedes

No (yet?) resignation in the speech, but already a raw observation establishing intrinsic limits to the new car of Brackley, the one which would nevertheless allow him to return to Red Bull. “There is something we don’t understand”, admitted boss Toto Wolff. “We're fast everywhere else, pretty much. We know we have a smaller rear wing, we compensate for what we lose in the corners. But it’s (in the corners) at high speed that we lose the most time.”

And the Austrian continued, regretting a problem with the correlation between the simulator and the track. “There are not many things that can be fixed. Our simulations point us in a direction and then we make a choice, we put on the right rear wing, from this range of settings. I think you gain a few tenths or not if you have the right or wrong settings, but there's not a huge performance corridor. It's more of a fundamental thing, we think the speed has to be there. We measure the aerodynamic downforce but we don’t find it in the lap time.” In two weeks, Melbourne already promises to be crucial!

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