Mercedes wants to stop the crash: “Deficits in all areas”

Formula 1 in Australia
“Deficits in all areas”: Mercedes wants to stop the dramatic crash

His daring jumps from the plane quickly got Lewis Hamilton’s mind off things. When skydiving in Dubai, the Formula 1 World Champion, who had been left behind, was able to switch off perfectly before traveling to Australia for the next race. “It’s such a great way to clear your head, reorient yourself and focus on the week ahead,” the 37-year-old wrote to his 27.5 million followers on Instagram after ten skydives. Arrived in Melbourne, the Brit posted a photo together with Mercedes team-mate George Russell from the weight room.

And this picture is symbolic. “We still have a lot of work ahead of us,” said Hamilton after the weak start to the season. In the world championship duel between defending champion Max Verstappen (Red Bull) and the leader Charles Leclerc (Ferrari), the former permanent winner is currently only an extra, his historic eighth world championship title is enormously far away. Hamilton was not even able to keep up with the Haas racing cars, which were still so lame in the previous season, in Saudi Arabia. He finished tenth and had to ask on the radio whether there was still a World Championship point for that. Hamilton is not used to this region with the Silver Arrows.

Toto Wolff: It’s extremely painful

“We were right in the middle of it for eight years. It’s extremely painful not to be a part of it anymore – and that with quite a bit of time behind us,” said Mercedes Motorsport Director Toto Wolff. The constructors’ world champion of the past eight years has had to contend with the completely new aerodynamic rules, which ensure that the car occasionally hops and loses time as a result. Anyone who finds the right setting for the ground clearance for their car increases their chances enormously. Competitors Red Bull and Ferrari clearly did better in the first two World Championship races.

Of course, that challenges the ambitious works team. “We won’t rest until we’re up there again,” said Wolff. Already on the return to Australia, where it has not been possible to drive in the past two years due to the corona, technical improvements to the Hamilton and Russell cars are expected this Sunday (7 a.m. / Sky). What do these bring? Nobody knows for sure. “I hope that the gap will get smaller,” said Wolff recently in Saudi Arabia, but at the same time spoke quite openly of “deficits in all areas”. It’s currently “not fun at all”, said the Austrian, but this “exercise in humility” should make his racing team even stronger in the long term.

Mercedes engineers don’t understand their car

The problem with so-called porpoising is complex, and Mercedes agrees on that. It is assumed that it is not just about the downforce that presses Hamilton’s company car down the straights until it briefly touches the asphalt and is pushed up again. “We still don’t understand our car as well as we did at the end of last year,” said lead engineer Andrew Shovlin, complaining about the lack of speed. But the right path has already been “taken, only the step was not big enough”. Now it’s about “finding a solution faster”.

The challenge: While Mercedes is fighting the current difficulties, the competition can already develop further. “We need bigger steps,” said 24-year-old Russell: “It’s difficult to say exactly when it will be our turn.” As the successor to the Finn Valtteri Bottas, the Briton actually wanted to intervene in the fight for victories from the start and make life difficult for Hamilton. With 22 points, fourth in the World Cup, he is already 23 points behind Leclerc, Hamilton is fifth, another six points behind. As third at the start in Bahrain, the 103-time Grand Prix winner was at least on the podium – that should become a permanent condition for the German car manufacturer again. “The season is still incredibly long,” said Wolff.

tis / Thomas Wolfer
DPA