Mercedes has revealed that its 2024 Formula 1 car boasts up to “70 points more downforce” per corner than its predecessor which hasn’t corresponded to lap times.
Having won eight consecutive Constructors’ Championships between 2014 and 2021, Mercedes has recorded one win since F1 returned to ground effect cars in 2022.
Despite abandoning the failed ‘zeropod’ solution last term to pursue a new concept with the W15, Mercedes has endured its worst opening to an F1 season since 2011.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has divulged that it is combating a “fundamental” correlation issue involving the figures from the wind tunnel and its high-speed performance.
But while its two cars trailed home seventh and ninth in Japan, Wolff highlighted how an “atrocious” opening stint on the Hard compound masked Mercedes’ progress.
Asked whether Mercedes had unlocked something that it could translate to the coming rounds, Wolff remarked: “Put the rear tyres in the rear and the front in the front!”
“I think the car is so complex for us where we put it in terms of the error balance and mechanical balance. These two need to correlate.
“We’ve followed a certain trajectory over the last years and keep turning and circling. We came to a point to say ‘Okay, we have to do something different’.
“Because we are measuring downforce with our sensors and pressure tabs, and it’s saying we have 70 points more downforce in a particular corner in Melbourne than we had last year.
“But on a lap time, it’s not a kilometre per hour faster. So it doesn’t make any sense. So where is the limitation?
“I think we wanted to tick some few boxes. Is there any limitation that we’ve spotted? And I think there is.”
Lewis Hamilton revealed in Australia that Mercedes had been forced to remove 90 points of downforce from its 2022 car to temper the porpoising it was experiencing.
However, Wolff has denied the situations are comparable, citing that the downforce is there but it has not translated into the lap times the simulations have suggested.
“Everything over these two years which we have seen points that there should be much downforce than we believe it is,” he explained.
“And now we’ve measured the downforce and it’s there. We’re just not able to extract the lap time out of it that we should and that the simulations show us. And it’s not trivial.
“I see you looking at me like, what the hell? Now imagine what we think!”
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