Analysis | Why the way back for Mercedes is story of the long haul

Despite a second disappointing season start in a row, Mercedes is invariably keeping its spirits up. To bring about the turnaround, important personnel changes within the top of the technical organisation were made on Friday. Whether that will be enough for this season? For a quick resurgence, it seems to be mostly wishful thinking, but the long term suddenly looks excellent.

The ongoing development of cars in Formula 1 is a constant rat race. Every Grand Prix, the teams introduce one or more updates, however small; some more successful than others. Browse back through the history books of Formula 1, and every season you will read from the vast majority of teams, that with an upcoming further development of the cars, they expect to make serious strides as the year progresses. That way, they tell themselves, the gap to the team just above them will be closed, whether that is a top team like Red Bull Racing (ahead of, say, Mercedes) or a mid-tier team like Alpine (think a McLaren).

Reversing rankings complicated

Of course, the competition is not sitting still either. In reality, it is rare to see such development that a team catapults itself from a deficit to a lead during a season. Sure, in the past Red Bull moved closer to Mercedes on several occasions during the year. But completely reversing the ranking did not happen during Mercedes' dominant era.

Yet not for the first time, Toto Wolff spoke words of hope this week. About how he trusts the process, and his people at Mercedes, that the potential in the car does exist and that the team will eventually come back. "In Australia though, we saw glimpses of performance in our car that encourages us for the next part of the season", Wolff told the Mercedes F1 team website.

For now, Wolff remains vague in his interviews about concrete, upcoming changes in the technical field: "We understand the car much better, we have defined a clear direction where we need to go and I believe we are on the right trajectory." But what is Wolff actually saying? What conclusions can we draw? Understanding a car is completely different from knowing the solution to a problem and then implementing it in the short term.

Heart under the belt

These are cryptic sentences from Wolff, which can be interpreted in many ways. Possibly they are meant to give heart to his own staff, not least star driver Lewis Hamilton. Although all parties involved keep repeating that Hamilton is really renewing his expiring commitment, the expectation is that the seven-time world champion does not want to spend his final years in F1 as an extra in a Red Bull show. There is no escaping the impression that Hamilton is waiting until that glimpse Wolff sees has actually become a structural race winner.

Thinking about Hamilton's future should probably include the changing of the guard on the technical front. Mercedes is not normally the team to completely change tack on personnel in the middle of a season, but the embarrassing situation cried out for it. So Mercedes surprised somewhat on Friday by announcing that James Allison and Mike Elliot are changing positions. The former is now the technical director (again), and Elliot the new chief technical officer.

Patience is needed

Both gentlemen know their way around Mercedes, so there will be no question of an induction period. Moreover, Mercedes is now once again applying the division of roles with which the German team dominated the F1 world in the past. " He was the one who turned aerodynamics inside out when I was at Mercedes and made the aerodynamics department the best in Formula 1 after years of Red Bull dominance," Nico Rosberg told Sky Germany recently, for example. Indeed, given the past since Friday, the chances of things eventually working out for Mercedes have increased considerably. Only patience is required.

Of course, Allison is going to try to turn the tide in the short term, but his real challenge lies with the '24 car. The personnel changes are mainly for the medium term: no miracles should be expected from Allison this season, however much Wolff may believe otherwise. For next year, the competition has been warned: Mercedes is coming again.