Mercedes chief technical officer Mike Elliott has revealed to the team ‘questioning everything’ in its bid to rediscover the winning habit in F1.
Since the introduction of new aerodynamic regulations at the start of last year, the team that won eight consecutive constructors’ championships between 2014 and 2021 has triumphed in just one of the last 34 grands prix as Red Bull has dominated.
That was in last year’s São Paulo Grand Prix in which George Russell clinched his maiden F1 win, either side of which Mercedes has struggled for answers.
After initially persisting into this season with its design philosophy from last year, the German manufacturer changed tack and appeared to make strides with its redevelopment, only to then fail to build on such a platform.
In contrast, Aston Martin stunningly delivered an upgraded concept over the winter that caught all of its rivals off guard, whilst McLaren has also produced updates that have thrust it into contention behind runaway leaders Red Bull.
Asked whether Mercedes has delved deep into whether there was something fundamentally wrong in its attempts to produce a similar surge, Elliott said: “You question everything.
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“You question whether you have got the right fundamental philosophies; you question whether you’ve got the right processes in the way you’re looking at the data. You’d like to think there’s some silver bullet you can find, something that’s wrong that you can fix.
“Generally speaking, it’s all about hard work. If you look at where we were last year with the car, with the issues we faced, we took quite a few big steps backward to get ourselves out of some of the positions we were in. Once you’re there, it is just catch up.
“You look at where we are (now) performance-wise – and Aston Martin made a good step over the winter – we’ve got ourselves into a decent position. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen McLaren make a big step.
“I think you have to look at that and say, on the one hand, it’s disappointing for us, on the other, it shows there are opportunities to make good steps.”
For now, though, and for the remainder of the season, all Mercedes can do is continue to make strides and learn for the closing 1o races of this campaign in the hope of playing catch up over the winter going into 2024.
“It’s always hard to make big changes to things like the chassis, the gearbox, the big structural parts of the car,” said Elliott. “That’s far easier to do over the winter.
“In terms of what we’re trying to learn, what we’re trying to achieve, we can get that learning on this year’s car.
“We said before, if you look at where we are in the season, and you look at where particularly Max is with the Red Bull at the moment, we’ve got to put the focus into the winter development.
“We need to make sure we’ve understood all the lessons we can from this year’s car and then turn it into the right things for next year.
“There’s still P2 to fight for in the championship, so we’ll keep developing, but obviously our prime focus now is on next year’s car.”
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