Why Mercedes’ F1 struggles are different this time

We’ve been here before. On 30 March 2023, the front cover of this magazine asked: ‘What next for Mercedes?’ Almost a year earlier, on 7 April 2022, the line was essentially the same, albeit with some added Toto Wolff fury – ‘“Totally unacceptable” – what’s gone wrong at Mercedes’. Arguably, this rather niche trend encompasses 2021 too, when on 15 April that year we were explaining ‘What Mercedes must do to fix the W12’ at the start of the squad’s titanic battle with Red Bull for that year’s world titles.

But those 2022 and 2023 features, and now this one, follow the second round of a new Formula 1 season. Mercedes was comprehensively defeated in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix earlier this month, not just by the dominant Red Bull team but by its regular rivals in the also-ran race. This isn’t a convenient case of deja vu. It’s real repetition and time to ask: what has gone wrong with Mercedes this time?

Trouble at the front of the F1 field is, of course, rather relative. Mercedes is not facing Alpine levels of awfulness. And, in clinching second in the 2023 constructors’ championship ahead of Ferrari, it has a results pedigree that most other teams would hurriedly snap up.

But for a team that secured an unprecedented run of title success – those seven drivers’ and eight constructors’ titles from 2014-21 – second really isn’t good enough. And Mercedes has such an array of driving and engineering talent, it’s understandable that F1 observers expect a lot from what remains an illustrious squad.

Mercedes’ start to 2024 might also be looking rather different had it not got its cooling calculations wrong in the Bahrain season opener. Sure, Ferrari was hobbled by its brake problems too but, when George Russell blasted past Charles Leclerc to run adrift of Max Verstappen on lap three of that race, Mercedes’ potential looked rather different.

It had also looked strong on one-lap pace at a track where finding and maintaining the tyre performance window is devilishly tricky. But then the cooling issue aided Ferrari’s resurgence past Russell, and stopped Lewis Hamilton from showing anything of note after his poor qualifying. Then, in Jeddah, Mercedes showed little across the weekend. And what it did see, it didn’t like. But it insists that the W15 is a step forward from its recalcitrant predecessors.

“To know that we have a package that we can potentially fight with is really pleasing,” Hamilton said in Bahrain. “The car is really fantastic. It’s really a big improvement from previous years. A lot more stable, a lot more fun to drive.”

Mercedes has backed itself with its W15 F1 car revamp, but it hasn't paid off just yet

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

Much of that is down to the effort Mercedes has made to improve what technical director James Allison called the “spiteful” rear-end handling of its first two ground-effect machines. The team has addressed this by moving to a pushrod rear suspension for 2024. But a rear-end limitation was nevertheless a big factor in its Jeddah struggles.

One question is: does the high-speed, brutal layout of the Saudi Arabian circuit represent something of a Mercedes bogey track, despite Hamilton winning there (still his most recent F1 triumph) in the inaugural event back in 2021? That event, of course, was held in the final year of the ultra-high-downforce chassis rules era that Mercedes aced.

If we ignore the 2022 Jeddah event, when Verstappen and Charles Leclerc engaged in a gripping battle at the front of the field, and concentrate on the past two, when a Red Bull has dominated, Mercedes’ pictures do look very similar.

In 2023, Russell led the way for the squad in qualifying – a 0.6-second gap to poleman Sergio Perez that converted to 25.9s behind at the flag. It was a similar story in 2024, when Russell’s 0.8s deficit as the top Mercedes in qualifying ended up as a 39.9s gap in the race. We can’t use Hamilton as a reference in either year because in both of F1’s most recent Jeddah visits he qualified down the order, and two weeks ago missed out on the safety car pitstop most others had banked. This added 11s to his race time (he ended up 7.5s down on Russell), and he was engaged in a race-long fight with the McLarens.

"One area that we need to continue to work on is probably the bouncing that we’re seeing. We got caught up with a bit of bouncing" George Russell

The Jeddah layout simply exposes cars that struggle in high-speed corners – because it’s essentially little else. And, in 2024, this appears to be Mercedes’ big weakness. “We’re good in the low-speed, and some of the medium-speed we’re not so bad,” Hamilton explained. “It’s just really the high-speed, so we have to add performance. It was like I was in a different category when I was going through the high-speed with the guys around me.”

The Jeddah track is also very smooth. This means the cars are set up to run very stiff to avoid bottoming out as the speeds rise and the downforce generated by the venturi tunnel underfloors does its thing. And here it seems is Mercedes’ main issue early in 2024.

According to the GPS data logged on the opening weekends in qualifying, the W15 compared well against the Red Bull RB20 in Jeddah’s slowest turns and in Bahrain’s more common tighter stuff too. This suggests its aerodynamic profile overall is doing what the team wants – generating decent levels of downforce in such turns. But when it comes to the fast corners and as the downforce loads naturally increase significantly, it seems that the W15 can’t maintain things smoothly.

Is bouncing the key issue for Mercedes again?

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

It all comes back, ultimately, to the bouncing problem that the team has encountered all the way through this rules era.

“I would say this year’s car is a totally different race car,” Russell said ahead of the Bahrain race event, after pre-season testing had taken place at the same venue. “To the point that the things we learned from last year in the way we were setting the car up, we will need to approach it differently this year. So, there’s a lot to learn about this. And it feels much closer to how a race car should feel.

“But the one area that we need to continue to work on is probably the bouncing that we’re seeing. We got caught up with a bit of bouncing [in testing]. We were pushing the car really aggressively. But, as I said, we’re dealing with a totally different beast this year, whereas 2022, 2023 they were both cut from the same cloth.”

Subsequent comments from the Mercedes camp on this situation have returned very different results. Ones that suggest Russell may have let on more than his team wanted with his earlier assessment.

In response to a fan question in Mercedes’ regular post-race debrief videos asking why the W15s seemed to be sparking as they struck the ground more than other cars in Bahrain, Allison said “it’s not completely sure in my head that we were sparking more than others”. He then went on to give a lengthy explanation of how the titanium skid blocks on all cars produce those sparks when striking the ground, the underlying question unanswered.

In Jeddah, Autosport’s enquiry to Russell to detail the bouncing sensation in 2024, and whether it had been improved over the Bahrain race weekend, received the following response: “I think all of the teams have got a pretty good handle on the bouncing now. And we can probably expose the limitation or shy away from it. But as we know, with the ground-effect cars, you want to get the car as low as possible and as stiff as possible, which has compromises.

“So, the feeling pretty much is very similar to what you felt over the last two years, but just to a much lesser extent. But as I said, I think for all of the teams, you’ll see some form of bouncing at points throughout this year.”

Russell has pointed out bouncing as a main problem but the team has remained tight-lipped

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

This again shows things are relative for Mercedes. But also how, if the team has made progress on its 2023 performance, so have its rivals. And, significantly, Russell also said in Jeddah that Mercedes is “chasing the downforce, but perhaps the downforce isn’t worth the losses that the bouncing brings, as we’ve shown really strong pace at points [mainly in practice]”.

A car that struggles in high-speed corners is always going to be tricky for its drivers. This is especially the case in Jeddah, where the close-proximity walls mean the confidence required to get the most from the ground-effect machines in the corners where they are designed to work best is at a premium.

Mercedes has worked hard – and says Allison, unusually in modern F1 – to aid Hamilton and Russell under braking compared to 2023. This concerns its adjustable upper wishbone approach to its pushrod front suspension arrangement. This should assist with finding the best set-up for improved anti-dive requirements of these cars when they brake at different track types. The W15 was visibly oscillating under braking during pre-season testing, which suggests that there are perhaps now two bouncing issues with which Mercedes is currently grappling.

"There is still this behaviour of the car in a certain speed range, where our sensors and simulation say this is where we should have the downforce, and we are not having it" Toto Wolff

The new approach should allow Mercedes to widen its set-up window too. But Allison also suggested that, in terms of completely addressing the major car architecture elements required to fully go down the development path Red Bull proved was best back in 2022, in his squad’s case “you definitely have restrictions because you’re still subject to the fact that there are things you can change within a year and things you have to change across years”.

This in turn gels with team boss Wolff claiming that “it’s more a fundamental thing” that is currently holding back the W15. On the high-speed weakness, the team opted to fall back on its smaller, lower-downforce rear-wing package in the sessions that mattered in Jeddah to build a gap on the large sections of that track with no corners. This, in turn, exacerbated its drivers’ issues in the fast, technical sequences, particularly in the first sector.

“That’s a biggie,” said Wolff. “There’s only so much you can tune here. Our simulations point us in a direction and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose, where you put the right rear wing on. You’ll gain a few tenths or not if you get the set-up right or wrong, but there’s not a massive corridor of performance. It’s more a fundamental thing, that we believe the speed should be there. We measure the downforce, but we don’t find it in lap time.”

Wolff felt the data wasn't delivering the expected lap times Mercedes predicted to achieve

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Wolff also said in Jeddah that “we had so many unknowns in the last year” and “where we started, we said, ‘OK, this could be a reason’ and ‘this could be a reason’ and ‘this could be a reason’, and we fixed that”. He continued: “I can see from the sensors that we have what we needed. But there is still this behaviour of the car in a certain speed range, where our sensors and simulation say this is where we should have the downforce, and we are not having it.

“This team has not been overconfident. We are probably the other way around. We see that glass half empty always. And that attitude stays, but this is also the attitude to fix it.”

In terms of what comes next for this storied squad, in the short term in 2024, it’s bracing for more pain. That’s because, says team trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin, this weekend’s Melbourne layout “has similar nature of corners” to Jeddah. Then, F1 heads to the Suzuka circuit where Red Bull was so crushingly dominant in 2023 and where McLaren – the package Hamilton struggled against most in Jeddah in escaping first from Oscar Piastri and later in attacking Lando Norris – was also excellent.

But, for now, it’s the Woking team that should be providing Mercedes with inspiration. After all, this time a year ago McLaren was struggling much more than Mercedes is, also with a car that bore many similarities to a previous Red Bull design. And it was able to develop it into a clear second-best package in 2023, before Ferrari, in turn, was able to make major gains at the end of the campaign – largely thanks to a new floor introduced at last autumn’s Suzuka visit.

PLUS: How the key tech contests of F1 2024 are shaping up

It’s in this area of the W15 where it would be logical to expect Mercedes to be planning a first major design upgrade of the new campaign. The team is predicted to experiment with a different version of the floor it used in Bahrain testing in Melbourne this weekend to keep things more stable, but it could be that a new floor design is coming in time for the European season that begins at mid-May’s Imola round. That would likely be aimed at making considerable progress in trying to ensure its package maintains its downforce levels better in the faster corners. If it can, driver confidence levels will rise, boosted by the knowledge that Mercedes should be on safer ground on more typical street tracks still to come in Monaco, Baku and Singapore.

It’s also worth bearing in mind how Allison insisted in Jeddah that Mercedes is “pretty happy with the broad platform [of the W15]” and how he thinks “the car will yield a good development season over the 24 races”. “We’ll be pushing ahead with this to make sure that we are competitive in this season,” he concluded, in response to a line of questioning on whether Mercedes has any hope of toppling Red Bull before the 2026 rules reset. “Still more the following year and the year after that too, so don’t be so pessimistic.”

The opening rounds didn't provide Mercedes with the results it desired, but the team remains confident of better days

Photo by: Shameem Fahath

But that point really isn’t so far away now. And the logic in diverting resources from an underwhelming project into a new one that has the potential to massively upend an F1 pecking order has been witnessed time and again in the championship’s history. It’s therefore likely to become ever more of a talking point for Mercedes – particularly with the paddock rumour mill awash with suggestions that it is very satisfied with its 2026 engine redesign efforts so far – if 2024 progresses as last year did and its winless stretch grows.

For now, however, Wolff insists that his squad is on track to make a recovery. “I’ve changed my mindset,” he said of Mercedes’ 2024 efforts. “I don’t think that additional pressure on all of us makes it better. I think we have a problem with the physics. It is not by lack of trying or by the mindset or the motivation or energies. All of that is there, and I can see the buzz in the organisation.

“It is a different confidence that I have in the group this time around. At a certain stage, you’re basically ticking all the boxes of the unknown, and where we are today, it’s pretty clear where it points to. It’s just my feeling that we will come on top.

"It would be the greatest moment to be able to help them get back to the top" Lewis Hamilton

“Is this good enough to beat a Max in a Red Bull? No, it’s not. But at least bringing ourselves into a position of fighting for podiums and being right there, I’m 100% sure we are going to get there.”

Hamilton’s struggles to sign off a remarkable era

“To finish on a high with the team would be a dream. We have gone through a whole heap together. It would be the greatest moment to be able to help them get back to the top.”

So far, Lewis Hamilton’s dream ending to his hyper-successful, 12-season Mercedes Formula 1 stint is not becoming a reality. In the year’s opening two rounds, he’s trailed team-mate George Russell in qualifying, and they might have been further apart on the grid last time out in Jeddah had Russell not blown his only new tyre run in Q3.

PLUS: Who will lead the Mercedes F1 resurgence in 2024?

In the races, Hamilton’s seventh in Bahrain and ninth in Jeddah mean he’s five places and 10 points adrift of his team-mate in the drivers’ standings. Russell has finished fifth and sixth so far.

Hamilton has endured a tough start to the 2024 F1 season

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

“It’s frustrating to three years in a row be in almost the same position,” Hamilton said of Mercedes’ start to 2024. “It’s definitely tough, but we’ll get our heads down and keep working away. I know everyone back at the factory is pushing as hard as they can, but we’ve definitely got to make some big changes. We haven’t made big enough changes, perhaps. You look at the three teams that are ahead of us and they still have different concepts to where we are in some areas. So, we’ve got some performance to add, that’s for sure.”

At least his final Mercedes F1 car, the W15, has been designed with his specific requests in mind. These centred on the car more closely following the Red Bull downwash sidepod concept this time, and also addressed how Hamilton felt he was struggling with Mercedes’ cockpit placement being further forwards in 2023. Then, he just felt he wasn’t being listened to – a point he makes clear in the most recent series of Drive to Survive.

“Obviously with Lewis’s experience, the car has been designed around his wishes,” Russell explained in Bahrain. “With the car being sat further rearwards than we were last year, the Red Bull-esque sidepods on the side and a slightly different steering rack.”

When it comes to signing a replacement for the Ferrari-bound Hamilton, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff appears to be in no rush.

His team benefited from Ollie Bearman showing well for Ferrari in his surprise Jeddah debut in place of Carlos Sainz, with the 18-year-old now set to return to Formula 2 action against Mercedes junior Andrea Kimi Antonelli at the Prema Racing junior category powerhouse.

PLUS: How Bearman's F1 debut will help Mercedes on its Hamilton replacement call

Mercedes feels that if Antonelli can run Bearman close in F2, then it will know how he might perform at the top level. But, resting against this is how the 17-year-old Italian has made a low-key start in F1’s support category. And there are alluring veterans in Max Verstappen and Fernando Alonso who just might be on Mercedes’ 2025 radar now too…

“We’re going to wait,” Wolff explained in Jeddah. “We have a few interesting options. And the more we’re able to [wait, we can] assess how the season pans out. Young drivers with us, against slightly older ones – that’s not going to be a decision which we want to take in the next few weeks. It’s rather a few months, depending on where it goes.”

Can Hamilton go out on a high with Mercedes?

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images