© Wolfgang Wilhelm for Mercedes-Benz AG
Former F1 designer Gary Anderson advises Mercedes on how to go about developing their car and says “everything is in place to build a championship-winning car”.
In his The Race column, former F1 designer Gary Anderson, who worked for Jordan, Stewart and Jaguar F1 teams, has taken a look at the predicament Mercedes finds itself in, in 2024.
“One-and-a-half seasons into these ground effect rules and I’m not sure that Mercedes is any more on top of them than at the start of 2022,” Anderson wrote.
“For a team of its standing, it’s difficult to understand the problems that are holding it back.
“At the start of 2022, Mercedes suffered from shellshock and spent the first six months looking for the magic bullet that would allow it to unleash what was expected to be race-winning performance.
“On a couple of occasions, it looked like the breakthrough was just around the corner but it always seemed to slip away as quickly as it appeared.
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“For 2023, I expected Mercedes to be on top of it. But the season started just as 2022 left off and what has followed has again been moments where it seems like a corner is about to be turned before it turns to disappointment.”
In the column Anderson went more in depth about Mercedes’ issues, and also commented on how their drivers are doing this season.
“As for the drivers, they are fairly close. George Russell had the upper hand when he started his time with Mercedes but now it looks like Lewis Hamilton has found his motivation again.
“He is back to his old self, where if you give him the tools to do the job he will bring you the results.”
In the end Anderson gave a few words of advice for the German team.
“Look closely at your procedures for signing off car concept steps and then development stages,” he wrote.
“Everything is in place to build a championship-winning car, it just seems that since these new ground effect regulations came into play that as a team you haven’t reacted to them in the correct way.
“Anything that is producing load by using the track surface as the other surface of a venturi will always be difficult to research, so you need to start to interpret that data with a pinch of salt.
“Sometimes, the old gut feel needs to be used,” Anderson concluded.
You can read Anderson’s full column here.
