Mercedes still has no idea what went wrong in Brazil

Mercedes still have no idea what went wrong at the Brazilian Grand Prix. In Mercedes' debrief, Riccardo Musconi, Head of Trackside Performance, explains how they look back on the weekend.

For Mercedes, the weekend in Brazil was a disastrous end to the triple header. In the United States, Mercedes looked competitive with the new upgrade, but Lewis Hamilton was disqualified due to an overly worn plank under the floor. The results were not too bad in Mexico but then came the weekend in Brazil.

Mercedes did not expect a setback

"The long run pace we showed in free practice was quite reassuring. We didn’t think that we needed to change the car around, so we went into qualifying, and the results were around the third row. The alarm bells went out during the sprint race because after the encouraging first two laps, the degradation of our car was quite high, mainly coming from the rear axle. At that stage, we worried about our performance on the Sunday," said Musconi.

After finishing fourth and seventh in the sprint race, things got worse on Sunday. Lewis Hamilton slumped to eighth place, making him the best Mercedes driver. George Russell did not even make it to the end of the race. The Brit dropped out when he was in tenth place. He probably wouldn't have scored any points anyway.

Despite a simulator session organised by Mercedes between the sprint and the GP, it could not get the setup right. "We were hoping that addressing some of the issues we experienced on Saturday would have been enough to put us in a more comfortable position for Sunday. What came out of Sunday was quite a bleak picture resemblant of our Saturday. We improved the degradation a bit on the rear axle, but at the same time, we started suffering from understeer, so the car was struggling to turn the corners. The pace therefore wasn’t there, and we couldn’t compete at the front."

What Mercedes learned from Brazil GP

Mercedes' only option was to start from the pit lane. They could have changed the entire setup. At Mercedes, however, this plan was dismissed as they felt they had even less of a chance from the pit lane. Asked what Mercedes has learned from this weekend in Sao Paulo, it appears that there are still many question marks within the team.

"First of all, we were faced again with an enigma of tyres. We can see them switching on and off within a few degrees, so it’s very, very difficult to be on top of them. The second thing was the degradation. We were not at the best end of it as we normally are, so that's a new thing for us to explore and understand. The third thing was that we were perhaps too conservative with the ride heights after Austin."