Mike Elliott, the technical director at Mercedes, has indicated that they have discovered the problem with their car. In the Beyond the Grid podcast, he shed some light on the cause of Mercedes' difficult season.

At the start of the season, it seemed for a while that Mercedes had lost their magic. George Russell managed to produce fairly consistent results, but Lewis Hamilton had to fight in the bottom half of the top ten for the most part. The absolute lowest point came at the race at Imola, when Hamilton failed to score any points on pure power.

So it was soon clear that Mercedes had made a design flaw in their car this year, preventing it from fighting for wins as we were used to. Meanwhile, the team has been consistently competing at the forefront again, but its first win is still pending. Technical director Elliott has now given a little bit of an explanation as to how these problems came about, and how the team has managed to put it right.

"I can point to one moment last year where we made a mistake, and what you see this year in terms of performance of the car is the result of that mistake. It is a mistake we have known about for a little while, and it is something we have been correcting, which is why our results are getting better and better."

Recovery is going to take until next season

The big question, of course, is: what exactly was that mistake? But Elliott couldn't say too much about that.

"I can't give you too many details because that's not something we want to give away. But I can say that these cars are complicated, and to get to the right outcome you have to get everything right. But this year's cars run fundamentally different from last year's, and somewhere in that transition we got it wrong. But it's not something we can correct for a little while yet, it's something we will do over the winter."

With five races to go, both Mercedes drivers are already eliminated for the title. Among the constructors, it is still technically possible for Mercedes to take the win, although realistically the team will mainly try to knock Ferrari from second place.