Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has admitted the team was certain that its slim sidepod car design developed at the start of this regulation era would be a success.
The Brackley-based squad entered the most recent rules overhaul in 2022 having previously stormed to an unprecedented eight consecutive Constructors’ titles.
However, Mercedes has encountered trouble since the return to ground effect machinery, scoring only one win at the end of 2022 and lagging 454 points behind Red Bull last term.
But while the trials and tribulations could have led to a fractious relationship developing within the team, Wolff has been encouraged by the continued united spirit.
When asked how tough it had been to handle the last two years, Wolff told Autosport: “You need to ask the team how hard it was to manage me.
“And not only the other way around. We’re all in this together. We knew that the day would come where it’s going to get more tricky.
“But it wasn’t as we expected, because the kind of scenario we had in mind was, ‘it’s tough to win a championship, we’re winning races, but we know where we are lacking performance’. And suddenly all of that wasn’t the case.
“Then you have false dawns and managing your expectations. It’s very tricky to keep the positiveness in our daily interpersonal dynamic.
“It was not always straightforward, but I think this is where the strength of the team is.
“We know each other so well that we can kind of live with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Each of us, in a way, carried the baton at a certain stage.
“When it was difficult in the debriefing room because the results were not as expected, it was then George [Russell] that should have all reasons to be upset, but he was about positiveness.
“Or it was Brackley or Brixworth. Hywel [Thomas] and his [powertrain] team were extremely important because they just delivered, they delivered, and they delivered. There was never any finger pointing to Brackley. There was always support.
“And I think that strength in the team is going to continue to give us a robust base of no blame culture.”
The root of Mercedes’ troubles can be traced back to the ‘zeropod’ concept that the team conceived at the beginning of this ruleset, which it also retained into the last season.
Having encountered a disastrous testing period and first race, Mercedes opted to abandon the solution and introduced a revised car at the Monaco Grand Prix in May.
But having been restricted by the launch-spec chassis of the W14 under the cost cap limitations, Mercedes proceeded to end a season winless for the first time since 2011.
Wolff, though, contends that the issues that have plagued the German marque are unrelated and concedes the team entered 2022 excited with its unique approach.
Questioned on whether the last two campaigns varied in how they felt, Wolff replied: “Yes, because when we started, we started with a certain degree of euphoria into ‘22 because we were excited to have gone for an extravagant car layout, with having the side impact structure at different point to everybody else and no sidepods.
“We had a really good development curve in aero with a car that was very low to the ground. We’d won the Constructors’ Championship a few months before, and we competed for the Drivers’ Championship in the last race.
“And then bang! Suddenly all the things that you thought that were in place in the team to in a way guarantee that you would be competing for race wins and the championship, suddenly you find yourself in a situation that not only you are not doing it, but the most clever people don’t understand where they got it wrong.
“In 2023, we knew that there were ingredients in the car that were positive, that we were able to dial out for the end of the ‘22 season. And then different problems came back in ‘23.
“The thinking was like, again, great people, great infrastructure, all the resource that you need, the right mindset.
“But maybe, because we wanted to be compliant with all the financial regulations, John Owen was more involved into making sure that the accounting side was working than in designing a car.
“So put simply, we got the physics wrong. It’s a ground effect car. Our tools didn’t work as good as they did for all the other previous technical regulations. Physics. Nothing mystical.
“To recognise that all the data that you’ve previously relied on and all the equipment wouldn’t correlate with what the car was doing on track. That has been the theme.
“So now we are basically putting everything that you could potentially change in order to dial out the nastiness in this car we are doing.”
With James Allison back in the position of Technical Director and overseeing a revamped car philosophy for 2024, Mercedes hopes it can close the deficit to Red Bull.
Both Allison and Wolff have spoken positively about the indications from the simulator, with its W15 said to be behaving “like a car for the first time in two years”.
But pressed on how he would then respond if the side hit another stumbling block, Wolff answered: “I don’t want to think about it, because I think we need all the positiveness and enthusiasm to come out with a product that works. If it doesn’t, we’re going handle it.”
