Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has denied that the team is “missing something” as it strives to overcome its struggles from the start of the 2024 campaign.
The German marque’s underwhelming opening to the current season continued in Australia at the weekend as both drivers failed even to reach the chequered flag.
Lewis Hamilton retired with an engine failure having qualified down in 11th, while George Russell crashed from sixth on the last lap at Turn 6 chasing Fernando Alonso.
The winter optimism that its revised car concept was an improvement on its predecessor has failed to materialise as Mercedes has its lowest points total since 2012.
However, Wolff believes Mercedes has taken productive lessons from its recent setback as it has eliminated potential reasons for its past failures under these rules.
“When I look at the positives, I think we took many potential root causes out of the equation,” Wolff explained.
“We weren’t sure about our suspension; we weren’t sure about the stiffness of our gearbox carrier. We had a vibrating steering rack and all of those things have disappeared, but fundamentally whatever we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate with what’s happening on the track.
“It is not a single person that says, I would interpret that data in this way and because of dogmatism, we’re not making any progress. I don’t see dogmatism and I don’t see an open environment where people share, where people take themselves by the nose and say, maybe in my area we’re making mistakes.”
Wolff is adamant there is no clear area where Mercedes is coming up short compared to its rivals other than the correlation issue which has been documented.
“It’s probably so tough in my career, in everything I’ve done before, be in finance, in investments, that you know which screws to turn and you know sometimes it takes time because back in my Williams days I knew what was missing. But here I don’t think we’re missing something.
“It is just a complication of what’s happening with the car that we can’t see. And it’s like an on-off switch.
“And then you see the progress that McLaren and Ferrari have made and this is the difference between last year and this year. This was a pretty good weekend for us last year.
“I just saw a clip before because I forgot about past races we were leading at the beginning 1 and 2. So, you know, we’ve got to really dig deep because it is brutally painful.”
Mercedes’ third ground effect machine has shown flashes of promise in certain sessions across the first three rounds before that has dissipated come crunch time.
Asked whether there was a lack of understanding of the current ruleset, Wolff said: “The performance of the car is made by some fundamentals and then some variables.
“And I think in the variables is all of the aerodynamics effect on the car, the mechanical adjustments that we make.
“But fundamentally the basic performance is made in a factory. And then you have a certain amount of tools that you can dial on track to make it better or worse.”
Although Wolff accepted Mercedes hasn’t nailed the fundamental aspects, he reiterated his stance that the W15 has the potential to be a competitive racing car.
“I had that feeling on the last weekend that there is a good car. I haven’t lost that feeling that there is a good car,” he repeated.
“Because there are sessions throughout the weekend and also the last two ones where we are absolutely right up there in terms of performance. And then we lose it again.
“P3 within tenths of everybody else. Quali? Seven. And then race pace was never there this weekend.
“You could see that McLaren and Ferrari were going seven, eight-tenths quicker on Friday already and we had no answer to that.”
