Toto Wolf breaks down the ‘fundamental issue’ with the Mercedes W15 that’s built around Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton

Mercedes has underperformed since the start of te season in all the matrics.

Toto Wolf breaks down the ‘fundamental issue’ with the Mercedes W15 that’s built around Ferrari-bound Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff (Via IMAGO)

Following back-to-back disappointing outings of Mercedes W15 in the 2024 season, Team Principal Toto Wolff has admitted that the car has some fundamental issues. The car encountered engine issues in Bahrain and was pretty slow at Saudi Arabian GP. The car, which George Russell claimed was built around Lewis Hamilton at the start of the season seems to be as tough to drive as its predecessors.

Mercedes’ weakness has been already exposed to its rivals. The German manufacturer was expected to give Lewis Hamilton a competitive car to win his eight-world championship and the fact that he is set to join Ferrai in 2025 makes 2024 an important season for Mercedes. To salvage the remainder of the year, they have to come up with a huge update, and to do that has to find cars’ weaknesses. Toto Wolff has pinpointed one such fundamental issue that needs to be addressed.

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There's not a massive corridor of performance, it is a more fundamental thing [that we are struggling with] as we believe that the speed so should be, we can more the downforce, but we can't find it on the laptop. It's been two years that there is something which we ned to spot and that will be the thing to unlock.
Wolff said via RacingNews365.

The Team Principal remarked that for the previous two years, they have been working on the car, but have failed to close the gap on leaders because of their failure to pinpoint the fundamental issue with the car, they can produce better runs if they solve this key issue.

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George Russell confirms Toto Wolff’s argument and insists that Mercedes getting slower

George Russell was disappointed with Mercedes’s performance in the last two races and pointed out that the car get slower as the race weekend progresses. He and Hamilton have the same complaints about the car underperforming and not giving them enough space to produce solid races. Russell who qualified third during the Bahrain GP faced various issues during the race. The cooldown of engines was one of the primary issues.

Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff, and George Russell (via imago)
Lewis Hamilton, Toto Wolff, and George Russell (via imago)
FP1, straight out of the box, we were top of the timesheets and always in the top three. FP2, P2. Then, both weekends, the pace just falling away from us. That hasn't been our competitors getting faster; that's been us getting slower.
Russell said.

Russell believes Mercedes needs to understand the car properly to maximize the result during the upcoming weekends. It will be interesting to see where Mercedes could potentially be in upcoming weekends, as there hasn’t been any positive momentum gained in the first two races.

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