Toto Wolff admits Mercedes hasn’t fixed ‘fundamental issue’ with W15 despite changing everything

Mercedes is currently fourth in the 2024 Constructors Championship with 25 points.

Toto Wolff admits Mercedes hasn’t fixed ‘fundamental issue’ with W15 despite changing everything

Toto Wolff (Via: Imago)

The Mercedes F1 team, despite its best efforts, has not been able to fix the woes with its W15 challenger. The machinery is nowhere near the pace of Ferrari and Red Bull and amidst the team’s Australian GP double DNF, Toto Wolff, has admitted that the team has still not fixed the fundamental issues with the car.

Under the current set of regulations, the Brackley-based team has struggled immensely to produce a championship-worthy car. The W15 has not been able to produce the performance output that is needed to challenge the front end of the grid.

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With the Japanese Grand Prix less than a week away, Toto Wolff has given a damning verdict on the Mercedes challenger!

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The new regulations were very much around the ground effect, that means all the suction happens through the floor, and we came out with a car that showed all the promise in the data and in the wind tunnel, but it didn’t deliver. Since then we’ve changed everything: The layout, the suspension, the drivers’ position, the gearboxes. But it seems that the fundamental issue is, at the core, we haven’t solved that.
Toto Wolff said in an interview with Fox

The 52-year-old has made it quite clear that Mercedes has tried pretty much every trick in the book to come up with a potent machinery. However, despite this, they have not been able to produce a challenger worthy of the coveted F1 world championship.

Toto Wolff deems the W15 as the ‘best of the bad’

While Toto Wolff has made it known that Mercedes’s 2024 car is not good enough, he has, however, deemed it the best car the team has produced under the current set of F1 regulations. Wolff believes that the W15 is slightly better than the W14 and W13.

Toto Wolff.
Toto Wolff (via IMAGO)

The Mercedes drivers, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, do not have their utmost confidence in the W15 going through corners at fast speeds.

It’s a little bit the same since two years. I think this one is the best of the bad. It’s a better platform to work on but it’s still not a car that a driver feels really good about throwing in the corner at 200 miles an hour.
Toto Wolff said in the same interview

The ongoing campaign has still got 21 races left and considering this, it will be in the best interest of Mercedes to try and develop their car as much as possible. Otherwise, they could fall further back in the Constructors standings. They are currently in fourth place with only 26 points to their name. Aston Martin is in fifth with 25.

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