Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff believes its 2024 car has the fundamental architecture needed to catch up with Red Bull under the current Formula 1 regulations.
Despite harbouring renewed optimism that its revised car concept had eradicated previous negative traits, Mercedes has experienced trouble with an inconsistent car.
The squad’s status as the fourth fastest team on the grid was consolidated at Imola as Lewis Hamilton trailed home 35 seconds behind race winner Max Verstappen.
However, the Mercedes camp has remained upbeat about its prospects looking ahead, with George Russell revealing the team had overcompensated for past hitches.
Having introduced updates this weekend and more to come in the pipeline, Wolff is convinced the marque is on the correct path with its newfound development route.
“I think that what we are seeing on the car now is that those incremental gains that we are bringing rather than a miracle update getting the car in a better balance window and making the car just have more performance, but it’s these things where you gain a tenth or a tenth and a half but at the same time the other teams are making progress,” he said.
“We are on a trajectory where we are making the car better, we can see that.
“It’s never like the share price going up like this it will do like this, as long as the kind of direction is correct and I feel more confident now.
Mercedes has been struggling through the nascent rounds to strike a balance between its car being competitive in both high and low-speed corners at the same time.
But Wolff has taken that recurring problem as a positive, citing how now understanding the reason behind its pace deficit marks a stark contrast to previous seasons.
Asked whether it was a mistake to chase a magic bullet in the past, Wolff said: “Yeah, I think we never had such clear indications like we’ve had in the last few races where we really saw that the car was either going really fast in the high speed or in the low speed, but never both of them together, and that’s something that we are able now to slowly dial out.”
Although he conceded Mercedes has been stung with “false dawns” beforehand, Wolff is optimistic that there will be no unforeseen surprises that provide a setback.
“I don’t know how often I used the stable platform, I think a stable platform is a car where you know which development direction to take,” Wolff assessed.
“Where you think you can be in the best performance, and that has been the zig-zagging over those last years, and there have been these false dawns absolutely.
“But I think there is a fundamental thing that we haven’t spotted when we should have, that’s why there’s more confidence at the moment.
“Having said that nothing in this sport is for granted, we are where we are, it’s not good enough, you can hear in my voice I’m angry, and just got to do a better job.”
Wolff is convinced that the more stable platform that Mercedes has assembled with the W15 means it can focus on adding performance rather than troubleshooting.
Asked whether the team now has the base groundwork in place to do what it wants on the aero side in order to catch up to Red Bull, Wolff answered: “Yeah it does.
“The basis of the car is more conventional, in the sense of defining where we want to have downforce and how we want to generate aero efficiency.
“We pretty much know where this is going and this is the advantage to let’s say the two years prior.”
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