Martin Brundle, an F1 analyst, has expressed his concern for Mercedes, alleging the team does not even understand their ‘knife edge’ car. After a fruitless two years for the Silver Arrows, with George Russell’s 2022 victory in Brazil their last Grand Prix win, the team was anticipated to improve with their new W15 cars this season after initially struggling to adjust to F1’s new era of regulations.
However, that idea has yet to become a reality. Last week’s Japanese Grand Prix marked Toto Wolff’s team’s latest disappointing performance, with Lewis Hamilton finishing ninth, just two places behind Russell, and neither driver has finished on the podium so far in 2024.
Brundle argues that their lack of speed and consistency reveals a lack of knowledge within Mercedes. “Their problem is, from time to time, the thing performs beautifully and they are really quite fast in phases,” he said on the Sky Sports F1 Podcast.
“But they can’t seem to replicate it from session to session, let alone day to day, let alone Grand Prix to Grand Prix.” This is the dilemma they have – this knife-edged automobile that sometimes appears to have been resolved, but most of the time they simply don’t grasp it.”
And Brundle, who has started 158 Formula One Grand Prix for Benetton, Williams, and McLaren, offered little hope, saying: “When you’ve got that, when all of your tools and all of your clever people don’t correlate with the stopwatch and the performance of other cars on the track, and you can’t seem to nail it down, then that’s really frustrating and I would say very worrying.”
Furthermore, the team’s troubles go deeper than the car’s performance. Hamilton revealed in February that 2017 would be his 12th and final season with the club, before completing a surprise move to Ferrari in 2025.
The seven-time world champion has vehemently rejected that his concentration is already on his move to the Scuderia, while Wolff has yet to name a replacement. And the British driver has sparked further controversy by admitting that he will be speaking with his manager about the potential of test driving with the Italian giants before making the official switch.
Wolff has made a defeatist figure of late, verbally relinquishing the drivers’ championship to Max Verstappen and Red Bull. “No one is going to catch Max this year,” he asserted, arguing that no team will be able to close the pace gap with the Dutchman.
“His driving and the automobile are simply fantastic. You can see how he controls the tyres, and this season is currently the best of the others. That’s all there is to it; maybe, we can get up to the McLarens and Ferraris and compete for second place.”
