Mercedes boss Toto Wolff revealed that the team is finding its fluctuating form throughout the 2024 Formula 1 season to date “difficult to compute.”
Mercedes started the 2024 F1 campaign way off of the pace and more than forty seconds off of Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
However, through upgrades, Mercedes built itself into a race-winning outfit once again, inheriting a win with George Russell at the Austrian GP and taking victories on merit with Lewis Hamilton at the British and Belgian GPs.
But since the summer break, Mercedes has found itself on the back foot once again with McLaren and Ferrari holding firm in victory lane.
“This variance in performance from race to race, or over a few races, is very difficult to compute, because what looks like an unchanged car can go from race winning to P6,” Wolff told Autosport.
Mercedes has scored just one podium in the last four races and Red Bull is without a win in eight GPs.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc scored podiums at both the Dutch and Azerbaijan GPs and won in front of the adoring Tifosi during the Italian GP at Monza.
McLaren meanwhile, has featured on the podium across the last 14 rounds.
Wolff acknowledged that McLaren is “the only team that is not a victim” of fluctuating performance issues.
“[They] have such a solid baseline and a less narrow window than all of us, that they’re able to keep the performance stable,” Wolff exclaimed.
“All of the others bounce between exuberance and depression. Before the summer, everyone wrote off Ferrari. But they have come back very strong.
“Before the summer, it was Mercedes who was the leading team, and clearly not today anymore.
“So it is so intricate to identify those performance contributors that at times even that most clever people are lost.”
Mercedes using past victories to measure performance
Red Bull has found itself in a world of bother trying to improve upon a once-dominant F1 package and the same has occurred with Mercedes to a degree.
Winning three out of four races prior to the summer break is a far cry from where the Mercedes squad finds itself now, fighting on the periphery of the podium.
“What everyone seems to find out is that more downforce doesn’t always translate into better lap time,” Wolff explained.
“Now, this is not the sensational news of the century, but it is the interaction between track, temperatures, tyres, balance, aerodynamics, and driver impulse, so many variables, that if you get all your ducks in one line, you are fast.
“And if there is just one factor that is out of line, you can look quickly very bad.”
Still, having won races has given Mercedes an important yardstick to measure against.
“Every session now is, in a way, interesting, because we are able to benchmark against the good races,” Wolff said.
“We can see what’s different on the car, what’s different on the track, what happened with the tyres and all of that.
“It’s not like we don’t know that this car has pace. It’s a race winner.”
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