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At Suzuka, Mercedes had another disappointing weekend, in which George Russell finished seventh and Lewis Hamilton ninth – reversing their respective qualifying positions in a train behind Fernando Alonso.
According to team boss Wolff, Mercedes’ difficult qualifying was made worse by an “atrocious” first stint as the Silver Arrows initially attempted a daring one-stop race, which unlike Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, they had to abandon in favor of a more conventional two-stop race. .
“We found ourselves back where we started and it was very difficult,” Wolff told Sky Sports F1. “We did a super fast second and third stint and we would have raced for a podium but [for] an atrocious first stint.
Expanding on his remarks later, he said: “We were very fast in the Esses, whereas last year we were nowhere.
“We were trying to create one stop, we probably over-managed the tires and had an atrocious first stint, but a very competitive second and third stint by the time we did what the others did, and that would have been completely different.”
Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Suggesting that Mercedes could have mounted a credible podium challenge raises eyebrows, given the 25-second gap between third-placed Carlos Sainz and Russell, with Mercedes instead appearing to confirm their fourth place in the pecking order behind Red Bull, Ferrari and McLaren.
So, do the numbers behind Wolff’s bold claims really compare?
Due to the different racing strategies, made possible by all three Pirelli tire compounds being viable options, it’s not as simple as comparing lap times and calling it a day. But several data points provide a good indication.
The first is the Mercedes duo’s second stint on hard tires, which roughly coincided with Leclerc’s stint on the same compound, as well as McLaren’s Lando Norris following Leclerc in stopping on the same lap.
And if the Mercedes cars were indeed fast during their first laps out of the pits, their average lap time as the relay progressed quickly moved towards 1’36.6s for Hamilton and 1’36.4s for Russell, compared to 1.36.1s for Leclerc and 1m36. .2s for Norris.
It should be noted that Russell and Hamilton stopped three to four laps early, so Leclerc and Norris enjoyed a slight advantage in terms of tire life during the 11 laps we were able to compare. But the latter also had to nurse their tires until the end of the race, while Russell and Hamilton knew they still had to stop for the mediums.
The third pass on Mercedes’ preferred medium tires is the other data point available. Here it’s just Sainz’s final stint which may offer some comparison since the Spaniard stopped just before the W15, but his Ferrari was put on the slowest hard compound so it’s not a perfect match.
Russell was delayed battling Oscar Piastri for seventh and was on average four tenths behind Sainz, but over the final 15 laps Hamilton was just 0.050 seconds behind the Ferrari while in clear air .
George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Carlos Sainz, Ferrari SF-24
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Here, Hamilton was finally able to capitalize on his previous stints on the “terrible” hard tyres, but it seems rather ambitious to suggest that the Briton could have chased down Sainz if he had started higher or chosen a different strategy.
Hamilton admitted as much, saying his car could not run on the hard tires at any time. “I don’t know what the different strategy would have been, if we stayed on the mediums to start, but we still had two really terrible hard tires to use,” admitted Hamilton.
Although the podium claims are fairly easy to debunk, the question remains as to why the team struggled so much in the first half of the race, only to find more competitiveness towards the end when it was already too late.
Heading into the Suzuka weekend, technical director James Allison said the one constant the team had found during its early season struggles was relative weakness in warmer conditions when the temperature the track increases.
If Mercedes’ theory holds true, it would go some way to explaining his fluctuations in form, as race day was much hotter than the rest of the weekend, with track temperatures up to 14 degrees warmer at the start of the race.
Oddly enough, cloud cover returned for the second half of the race, causing the asphalt temperature to drop from 40°C to 30°C by the time Mercedes put on the medium tyres. But that doesn’t necessarily explain the difference in performance between the first two stints on hard tires, when the track wasn’t that cool yet.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Mercedes has had to do a lot of soul-searching to find out why the performance and downforce it sees from the factory isn’t translating into cornering speed or lap times.
“We have 70 more points of downforce in a particular corner in Melbourne than last year, but on lap time it’s not a kilometer per hour faster, so it doesn’t make any sense,” Wolff revealed.
“So where’s the limitation? I think we wanted to check a few boxes to understand if there was a limitation that we spotted, and I think there is.
“When you look at the results, it’s clearly not good and everyone knows that. But we’ve definitely taken a big step forward in the way we want to drive the car and our understanding.”
The positive side is that Mercedes may have found some answers on how to put its W15 in a more comfortable place, with Hamilton claiming the car was the most enjoyable to drive in three years.
But are you fighting for the podiums? Considering the first four rounds of 2024, this still remains a pipe dream.
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