Wolff reveals what’s behind Mercedes’ difficulties

Having car problems Formula 1 since 2022 – when a new regulation was implemented -, the Mercedes changed the concept of 2024, in another attempt to seek performance. However, problems in data correlation are preventing full understanding of the 2024 challenger.

The boss of Mercedes, Toto Wolff, believes this now indicates that the team’s findings in the wind tunnel do not match the car’s behavior on the track.

“When I look at the positives, I think we’ve eliminated a lot of potential causes from the equation,” Wolff said of Mercedes addressing the weaknesses of its recent ground-effect creations.

“We weren’t sure about our suspension. We weren’t sure about the rigidity of our gearbox bracket. We had a vibrating rack. All these things are gone. But fundamentally, everything we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate with what’s happening on the track.”, she explained.

The Austrian considered data translation to be a general problem, rather than any team member leading the team in the wrong direction with their specific interpretation.

He continued: “It’s not a single person who says, ‘I would interpret this data this way’ and because of dogma, because of dogmatism, we’re not making any progress. I don’t see dogmatism. I see an open environment where people share, where people pick each other up by the nose and say, ‘Maybe in my area we’re making mistakes.'”

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Wolff has often said that Mercedes has a “no fault” culture.

The former Williams F1 team shareholder continued: “It’s so difficult in my career, in everything I’ve done before, whether it’s finance and investing, that you know which screws to tighten. Sometimes it takes time because in my time at Williams I knew what was missing.”

“But I don’t think there’s anything missing here. It’s just a complication of what’s going on with the car that we can’t see. It’s like an on-off button.”, he analyzed.

Wolff’s assessment followed the Australian GP last weekend, of which Lewis Hamilton retired due to a power unit failure before George Russell be eliminated at the end, when the Ferrari did a double.

“So you see the progress that McLaren and Ferrari did,” said Wolf

“That’s the difference between last year and this year. It was a really good weekend for us last year. We were leading at the start 1-2. So we really need to dig deep because it’s brutally painful.”