Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has hinted there are correlation issues with its 2024 Formula 1 car with an imbalance between simulator data and on-track performance.
Having failed to show its “true potential” in Bahrain amid engine cooling concerns, Mercedes entered the Saudi Arabia weekend optimistic about its revamped W15.
However, the German marque failed to translate encouraging practice pace as it locked out the fourth row before recording a sixth and ninth-place finish in the race.
Mercedes lost out through the sequence of high-speed direction changes that form the opening sector of the Jeddah Corniche Circuit throughout the weekend.
This was illustrated in the race as Lewis Hamilton was quicker than Lando Norris in the closing laps but lost too much time to utilise a straight-line speed advantage.
But Wolff has denied that Mercedes’ choice to adopt a less-loaded rear wing configuration was behind the deficit that hampered its drivers through the faster corners.
“I think there is a bigger factor with a lack of high speed than just the rear wing,” Wolff contended regarding Mercedes’
“We are missing downforce beyond the steps that you would have with a bigger rear wing. We tried that with Lewis and there is something that we don’t understand, because we are quick everywhere else pretty much and we know that we have a smaller rear wing.
“We are compensating what we are losing through the corners, but it’s just the high speed where we are losing all the lap time.”
Wolff revealed that the expectations Mercedes has garnered from its simulation tools have thus far not materialised on the race track with its latest ground effect car.
Asked whether Mercedes could address its high-speed shortfall on the set-up side, Wolff answered: “I think that’s a biggie. There is only so much you can tune here.
“Our simulation points us in a direction and this [is] the setup range that we then choose, you put the right rear wing on and I think you gain a few tenths if you get the set-up right or wrong.
“But it is not a massive corridor of performance. It’s more a fundamental thing that we believe the speed should be there, we measure the downforce, but we don’t find it on the lap time.”
Wolff confirmed that Mercedes has solved several issues that had blighted it last term, though, which includes the “spiteful” rear-end traits of its W14 predecessor.
“I think we had so much unknowns in the past year, where we thought this could be a reason and this could be a reason and this could be a reason, and we fixed that,” he stated.
“We can see from the sensors that we have what we needed.
“But there is still this behaviour of the car in a certain speed range that our sensors and simulations say this is where we should have the downforce and we are not having it.”
However, along with concerns over its simulation tools providing inaccurate data, Mercedes also encountered a recurrence of bouncing at the Saudi Arabian GP.
“So, the thing is that it’s been two and a half years that we are chasing this fundamental … it’s been two years that there is something that we need to spot, and that’s the thing to unlock,” Wolff said in relation to the porpoising phenomenon.
“It is not by lack of trying, we have pushed so hard and we have got to give it a massive, massive go now in the next week with more data to understand and come back to Melbourne stronger.
“We are on a mission on this one and I am 100 per cent sure we are going to unlock that performance gap.”
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