Toto Wolff, head of Mercedes, acknowledged that his team faces difficulties in the 2024 Formula 1 season. Despite considering the current car, the W15, an evolution in relation to previous models with ground effect, Wolff admits that Mercedes is still far from being able to be in contention for the championship title.
Mercedes dominated F1 in the hybrid era, winning eight consecutive constructors’ titles between 2014 and 2021. However, the return of ground effect to the category in 2022 marked a change of scenery. Mercedes has won just one race since then, the São Paulo GP in 2022 with George Russell, and currently occupies fourth place in the constructors’ world championship.
One of Mercedes’ main mistakes was the adoption of the ‘zeropod’ concept, which did not deliver the expected performance on the track. Even with a revamp of the W15 for 2024, the team is facing its worst start to a season since 2011.
Wolff believes that the agreement between the teams, as the technical rules mature, hides Mercedes’ relative progress: “It’s a bit like the last two years. I think this car is the best of the worst. It’s a better base to work from, but it’s still not a car that makes drivers comfortable attacking corners at 200 mph.”
After the Saudi Arabian GP, Wolff revealed that Mercedes faces a fundamental problem in the correlation between the wind tunnel and the real track. Despite several changes to solve the problem, the Austrian leader recognizes that the central issue has not yet been resolved.
“I think we lost the way at the beginning of 2022,” said Wolff, asked about the turning point for Mercedes. “Our tools and systems have always given us champion cars, but the new rules revolve around ground effect. This means that all the support comes from the floor. We developed a promising car in the data and in the wind tunnel, but we didn’t deliver it on the track.”
Despite the bleak short-term scenario, Wolff remains optimistic for the future: “I’m looking at the situation with a long-term perspective. I am part of the team as a leader, co-owner, and I want to look back in ten or twenty years and see many more championships won. But we need to be realistic about what we can achieve in a single weekend. We are not where we want to be. We need to work hard, focus, continue evolving and be more competitive. But I doubt this will happen overnight”, concluded the Mercedes boss.
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Tags: lost Wolff Mercedes current performance
