Mercedes face conundrum: 'That's the problem they face'

George Russell joined Mercedes as Valtteri Bottas' replacement in 2022 with the expectation that he would compete for world titles. Nothing could be further from the truth, as the German racing team have missed the mark. Toto Wolff hopes to catch up with Red Bull Racing, but in fact the gap only seems to be growing.

Red Bull may not be running further and further away, but the other teams in the sub-top seem to be getting closer than Mercedes. Mercedes - second in the Constructors' World Championship in 2023 - were able to compete with race teams like Ferrari and McLaren in 2023. This season that is not on the cards. It resulted in the worst-ever season start for Mercedes in Formula 1.

Martin Brundle is surprised that Mercedes has shown so little in the first four Grands Prix of the season. "They've got to understand this car and I think that's a grave concern for all of the people there. There's a lot of very clever people, with a huge amount of resource, performance tools and budget. I'm not going to try and second guess what's wrong with it, or state what I think is wrong with it, because if they don't know, then I certainly don't know," the F1 commentator said.

Mercedes no longer know

The correlation between the simulator and on-track performance is lacking. "They cannot get a handle on these ground-effect cars," Brundle said in Sky Sports' new F1 podcast to the new regulations in force since 2022. "This is the third season of these regulations. They turn up, they think they have aced it, a lot of positive noises, and then it still bounces a little bit with the porpoising."

At times we see the potential of the W15, but it happens far too infrequently. "But their problem is, from time to time, the thing performs beautifully and they are really quite fast in phases. But, they can't seem to reproduce that session to session, let alone day to day, let alone Grand Prix to Grand Prix. This is the problem they have got - this knife edge of a car that sometimes looks like they have finally sorted it and more of the time they just can't understand it."