The bigger answer Mercedes needs from its now delayed F1 upgrades

The cancellation of the Imola weekend means that the debut of Mercedes’ much-awaited Formula 1 upgrades is now delayed until the Monaco Grand Prix. It has resulted in another week of waiting and anticipating just what impact the changes will make to the so far troublesome W14.

But while hopes will be that, even around the streets of Monte Carlo, the revamp can show an immediate lift in performance, of much bigger importance to the team is the answer that will be delivered about its ultimate long-term potential.

With Mercedes having gone the wrong route with its zero-pod concept, and subsequently plotted a fresh path for its recovery, Mercedes needs no reminding that what comes next has to work.

If there is no sign of improvement, and the gap to Red Bull remains as great or even greater than it has been up to now, then that could prompt wider questions about whether or not the blip that Mercedes has faced since the start of 2022 is actually the result of deeper issues at the team that go beyond individual concept calls.

Ultimately it could trigger a reality check that perhaps Mercedes is following a route that many dominant teams like Williams and McLaren have taken in the past: that once you fall from the top, the momentum of decline can take you down for years.

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has long been fascinated by the art of management and indeed has become a guest lecturer at Harvard Business School on the very topic of leading a high-performance team. But just as he has dug deep into the factors of what makes a successful organisation, so too has he done his research on the elements that lead to decline in great teams.

And the truth of the situation is that there is rarely a common theme to what knocks a team from its pedestal. Sometimes it can even be the result of the most innocent of decisions having huge long-term ramifications. He cites that McLaren’s falling away from being regular race winners can be traced back to the call it made to help out Brawn GP with a supply of Mercedes power units after Honda’s withdrawal from F1 at the end of 2008.

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff believes McLaren's recent struggles can be traced to it giving Brawn GP engines back in 2009

Photo by: Charles Coates / Motorsport Images

“We have spent quite some time analysing the up and downs of teams,” said Wolff, speaking from his office at Mercedes’ Brackley factory. “I think you can retrace it to decisions that have been taken, or the political landscape that has changed, or engine or tyre suppliers that have changed.

“But you’ve got to be aware that every decision you take, in all of these key areas, that may seem to be of less relevance today, can have a huge consequence going forward. If you think about McLaren, allowing Brawn to have the Mercedes engines, which seemed irrelevant back in the day, triggered Brawn winning the championship and Mercedes buying the team.

“Then Mercedes taking Lewis Hamilton, and winning eight consecutive constructors’ championships and taking McLaren's engine away. These things happened at Ferrari, these things happened at McLaren, these things happened at Williams, to a greater or less magnitude. All of us are at risk of taking decisions that have less relevance today but are huge tomorrow. And I think we're trying to look at that and act accordingly.

“That is in relation to people's shelf life, from relevant competence and personal energy and motivation, to other areas; Who do you choose as your suppliers? Who are your customers? Who do you put in the car? How do you structure your organisation? Because all that has an effect.”

"A company is not a static organ that you can freeze and say: 'this is the people that make it fly, they're going to stay forever and this is the structure that works and the way we tackle things'" Toto Wolff

For now, Wolff remains convinced that what has been at play at Mercedes is not a case of the team falling down as others have done. Instead, he says that what the squad is experiencing right now is simply the result of individual technical decisions.

“In Formula 1, there's never one silver bullet,” he said. “You need to be excellent in every single area. And, what I've always said in our organisation, is it is physics, not mystics.

“We've gone for a very bold car, and we failed at delivering the performance that we expected. And I don't think we have made mistakes in the organisations that were fundamental for these decisions. Just all of us together were misled by our own analysis. We have no fundamental issue in the team.

“It was individual technical decisions, but those individual technical decisions are based on processes or based on data that has been generated. And the extrapolation of these is that I think we lacked the tools that are necessary for these ground effect cars, which work very differently with the floor concept than the cars from the last eight years.”

Wolff believes there are no "fundamental issues in the team" despite its ongoing performance woes

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

In the immediate sphere of the car design decisions, Mercedes has already taken action: with James Allison having been brought back to being technical director, and Mike Elliott taking his place as chief technical officer. Wolff talks of teams being living organisms, that evolve and change through time and with different staff on their journey through them.

Mercedes has been through eras where Ross Brawn, Paddy Lowe, Allison, Aldo Costa, and Andy Cowell all played important parts in its success, with all of them eventually moving on for different reasons (although Allison is now back).

“A company is not a static organ that you can freeze and say: ‘This is the people that make it fly, they're going to stay forever and this is the structure that works and the way we tackle things,’” adds Wolff. “I think new people bring new approaches and have different management styles. HPP [Mercedes’ engine division] is a great example of that.

“Andy [Cowell] developed the organisation and decided for Hywel [Thomas] to follow, and Hywel has run with the baton in his group and is doing a splendid job. And equally here with James Allison, as a technical director, he brought this organisation up and James is a very unique individual in his own way.”

But what perhaps is key to Wolff having faith that Mercedes is not heading for years of decline is that he is not complacent enough to think he has all the answers. There is always a danger for successful F1 teams to get stuck in their ways; believing that what they did in the past to achieve success is the recipe for more triumphs in the future. But grand prix racing does not work like that.

F1 is a fast-changing business, and there is no set blueprint for what guarantees triumph within a team. What works to one set of regulations may not be ideal for the next; and teams can cotton on to an element – be it technical or infrastructure related - that gives them an intrinsic advantage and that their rivals know nothing about.

That is why it is important teams are populated by those with outside knowledge, because even someone like Wolff, for all the research he has done about management and companies, only really knows how Mercedes works and what works for Mercedes. He can only guess about the recipe that Red Bull has put together to make itself the current class of the field.

Outside perspective is a key asset to a Formula 1 team - as Mercedes has found poaching top Red Bull figures

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“Now and then, if an organisation becomes mature and follows its processes and strategies, and it's successful, you need to get an outside perspective, and you need to shake it up,” said Wolff about making use of those who know how other teams works.

“You don't want to reinvent it, but you want to consider whether yesterday's assumptions are still competitive enough going forward. And therefore, having somebody come in with fresh eyes, looking at it in a very neutral way, is beneficial. So, from time to time, even in a successful organisation, you need to parachute good external people in, because they help you to do the next step.”

It was no coincidence, therefore, that on the eve of this season Wolff recruited former Red Bull COO Jayne Poole to help bring that external perspective and help Mercedes work out what it needs to do to avoid the fate of other top teams.

“Jayne is a person that I admired over the last 10 years, that I got to know 10 years ago and I always had a very respectful relationship with,” explained Wolff. “She worked for the competitor, but you can respect people working for a competitor and acknowledge their performance. Her role at Red Bull was, in my opinion, a very large part of the success of the team over the last years.

"We're third, we've been leading races, but Red Bull is setting the benchmark and they've done a great job at it. That is our benchmark" Toto Wolff

“That relationship came to an end, like many relationships come to a natural end. I wanted to hire Jayne for a long time, but it was just never an option. And then it became now. She's a great addition. She has a lot of knowhow, she's a great psychologist, she has seen another organisation, she knows everybody pretty much, and she has created forensic profiles of all of the good people in Formula 1. Having her eyes is a very, very strong edge to the organisation.”

Eyes are on both the short, medium and long terms needs of the team. But even if the debut of the upgrades delivers the step forward anticipated and puts the team on the exact path it wants to be on, do not think for a second that Wolff will think it is job done.

“We're in a relative game, and you need to look at the leader,” he says. “We're third, we've been leading races, but Red Bull is setting the benchmark today and they've done a great job at it. That is our benchmark. And if you benchmark yourself against the best, we have catching up to be doing.”

A gain in performance from its new upgrades won't have Mercedes resting on its laurels

Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images