© Sebastian Kawka for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix ltd.
Toto Wolff says Mercedes is “on a mission” to understand what’s slowing down the W15, and he is “100% sure” that the team is “going to unlock that performance gap”.
Mercedes entered the 2024 season expecting their car to be a good platform to build upon, however, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, the car did not perform as expected.
After the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, team boss Toto Wolff said the team is yet to understand what it slowing down the W15.
“There is something which we don’t understand,” the Austrian said.
“We are quick everywhere else pretty much. We know that we have a smaller rear wing, we’re compensating what we’re losing through the corners.
“But it’s just at high speed where we’re losing all the lap time.”
Wolff added the issue is not how they set up the car, but something “fundamental”.
“I think that’s a biggie. There’s only so much you can tune here. Our simulations point us in a direction and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose, where you put the right rear wing on.
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“I think you’ll gain a few tenths or not if you get the set-up right or wrong, but there’s not a massive corridor of performance.
“It’s more a fundamental thing, that we believe that the speed should be there. We measure the downforce but we don’t find it in lap time.”
However, Toto is confident the team will be able to figure out their issues ahead of the next race in Australia.
“It’s been two years that there is something we need to spot, and that’s the thing to unlock. We have just got to work. It’s not through lack of trying.
“We’ve pushed so hard and we’re going to give it a massive, massive go now in the next week, with more data to understand. We are going to come back to Melbourne strong.
“We are on a mission on this one, and I am 100% sure that we are going to unlock that performance gap,” Wolff concluded.
