{"id":19691,"date":"2024-03-27T06:57:03","date_gmt":"2024-03-27T10:57:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=19691"},"modified":"2024-03-27T06:57:03","modified_gmt":"2024-03-27T10:57:03","slug":"toto-wolff-admits-to-fundamental-problem-with-mercedes-w15","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/03\/27\/toto-wolff-admits-to-fundamental-problem-with-mercedes-w15\/","title":{"rendered":"Toto Wolff admits to fundamental problem with Mercedes W15"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admits his team are struggling to understand the W15. This goes beyond just this year, with the Silver Arrows clearly missing a crucial element of the 2024 F1 regulations. Moving forward, Wolff admits there is no certainty this knowledge gap will be filled.<\/p>\n<p>The Australian GP was, for all intents and purposes, a disaster for Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/03\/06\/george-russell-responds-to-verstappen-mercedes-rumours\/\" target=\"_self\">George Russell<\/a> both retired from the race, meaning the German constructor left Albert Park empty-handed.<\/p>\n<p>A rare reliability failure brought Hamilton&#8217;s W15 to a halt, cementing the 7-time Champion&#8217;s rather disappointing start to 2024. On the other side of the garage, a crash on the final lap meant that Russell also did not finish.<\/p>\n<p>However, these DNFs are not the most disheartening aspect of last weekend&#8217;s race for Mercedes. Instead, their lack of performance relative to their rivals emerged as their biggest concern.<\/p>\n<p>Once again, the W15 showed signs of life in Free Practice. The Silver Arrows finished within a tenth of FP3&#8217;s fastest overall time, providing the team with some hope ahead of qualifying.<\/p>\n<p>However, this performance soon dissipated. Whether because other teams stepped things up or Mercedes went backwards, the result was painful for Toto Wolff&#8217;s team all the same. Hamilton was eliminated in the second part of qualifying, whilst Russell was largely an afterthought in Q3.<\/p>\n<p><a id=\"C_9KnFdIRZdueOqbOGxhNA\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2110411403\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'C_9KnFdIRZdueOqbOGxhNA',sig:'EI7Hezko1zf8jRLILyAfv-gMjgClZOBLTM5QAaEcvzg=',w:'594px',h:'430px',items:'2110411403',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h3>Toto Wolff admits to significant problems<\/h3>\n<p>Reflecting on the Australian GP weekend, the Mercedes team principal admitted to genuine concerns at Brackley:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;There are sessions on the track where we&#8217;re absolutely there with the performance, but then it goes away.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;In the third free practice session, for example, we&#8217;re a tenth behind. But in qualifying we&#8217;re seven tenths behind.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;We don&#8217;t understand some of the car&#8217;s behaviour that we would have always understood in the past.&#8221;<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Another fact to consider, which Wolff mentioned in other comments, is how Mercedes have regressed compared to rivals.<\/p>\n<p>Last season, McLaren finished last in the points at this Grand Prix. Twelve months later, Andrea Stella&#8217;s team is comfortably ahead in the standings &#8211; finishing third with Norris and fourth with Piastri in Melbourne.<\/p>\n<p>Despite all the negativity surrounding last year&#8217;s Mercedes challenger, Lewis Hamilton finished second in the 2023 Australian GP. George Russell was also fighting for the lead before suffering a series of unfortunate events.<\/p>\n<p>Put simply, James Allison and his technical have gone backwards compared to their rivals. Perhaps of greater concern, they do not know why.<\/p>\n<p>Only a month ago, the Mercedes technical director predicted Mercedes would be Red Bull&#8217;s closest challenger in 2024. Evidently, this is not the case.<\/p>\n<p>Ferrari rubbed salt in the wounds with a landmark 1-2 victory, demonstrating <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/03\/22\/charles-leclerc-takes-early-advantage-over-red-bull-in-australia\/\" target=\"_self\">performance and clear progress over winter.<\/a> The Maranello-based team was in a similar position to the Silver Arrows last season, being forced to return to the drawing board after making mistakes over winter.<\/p>\n<p>This time, however, the Italian outfit <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/03\/18\/fred-vasseur-confident-ferrari-has-removed-key-weakness-in-2024\/\" target=\"_self\">corrected its mistakes.<\/a> The same cannot be said for Mercedes, who could have a very difficult 2024 unless something changes very soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff admits his team are struggling to understand the W15. This goes beyond just this year, with the Silver Arrows clearly missing a crucial element of the 2024 F1 regulations. Moving forward, Wolff admits there is no certainty this knowledge gap will be filled. The Australian GP was, for all intents [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":19692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2220,68,23,121,825,2221],"class_list":["post-19691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2024-formula-1-season","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-mercedes","tag-toto-wolff","tag-w15"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}