Former F1 technical director Gary Anderson says Mercedes will “still be fooling themselves” in 2024 because Lewis Hamilton has no idea how to solve problems with his W15 car. thinking.
Mercedes, who were limited to just one win throughout the 2022/23 season, were hoping to return to championship contention in 2024 with the new W15.
Mercedes W15 woes call into question Lewis Hamilton's technical know-how
Despite much pre-season optimism, Mercedes struggled in the first two races of the season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with Hamilton calling for “big changes” after the race in Jeddah.
Hamilton, who announced last month that he would join Ferrari in 2025, has been a vocal critic of Mercedes' development direction in recent seasons, with the team's technical department ignoring his advice on car design after last year's season opener. claimed to have done so. Destiny W14.
However, former technical director Anderson said in a column for the Telegraph after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix that Hamilton had a limited understanding of what it takes to make a competitive car in F1's current ground effects era. I accused him of being there.
“After the race, Hamilton said we needed to make major changes to the car.
“He said that other teams around him still have different concepts, but Hamilton is talking about what he sees.
“The key part of these cars is the underfloor and Hamilton doesn't know what the other teams are doing there. What you see isn't always what moves the car.
“He seems to have the idea that if Mercedes made their car look like Red Bull it would be just as fast, but that's not going to happen. Although the W15 needs more work than a visual concept. , the worry is that we still don't understand what is needed in a ground effects car.
“Just like in 2022, the fact that both drivers had different set-ups as the weekend progressed is not a good sign.
“Hamilton will go back to his 2022 approach of trying to find a silver bullet in his set-up and hoping he can find half a second out of nowhere.
“Obviously they're still experimenting with their cars, but I don't think there's a solution anymore in that solution, and in a car that's going to jump in performance out of nowhere.”
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Anderson feels that Mercedes' start to the season bears eerie similarities to the past two seasons, with the Silver Arrows' approach to the race weekend (the W15 showing a turnaround in pace in practice before regressing as the weekend progresses). ) claims to mark the start of the next season. A team that is “still fooling ourselves”.
He explained: “The two races and their performance suggest they are still struggling to overcome their limitations. It feels like a repeat of 2022 and 2023.
“Teams need to be realistic about their cars and wake up to the reality that they have a problem.
“In a way they are still fooling themselves but this will depend on how they approach the weekend.Through Bahrain and Saudi Arabia they looked competitive in the early practice sessions but , then retreated.
“This suggests that they are running the car lighter on Friday to give them confidence. As the weekend progresses the rivals push even harder and Mercedes falls back into its original position. do.
“In terms of raw pace alone at Jeddah, they were the fifth fastest team. They used the same tire strategy in the race, with George Russell finishing 40 seconds behind winner Max Verstappen. Lewis Hamilton finished 46 seconds behind Verstappen with a slightly different strategy, continuing with a long stint on mediums and then running the final 13 laps on softs.
“Neither strategy worked for them. This was a difference of close to a second per lap in race trim, and they were also close to a second difference per lap. [Verstappen] Even in qualifying, it was more than one lap.
“They have to go back to doing their homework between races in a more effective way than just running the car on less fuel and initially looking and feeling good.
“They don't learn anything this way. It's a deceptive and short-term confidence booster.”
Bounce will return to Mercedes in early 2024, but the team continues to lack understanding of F1's current rules compared to Red Bull and customer team McLaren, which have bounced back from a slow start last season to emerge as world champions. Anderson feels it. The most consistent threat.
He said: “Getting a damaged Mercedes to bounce in 2022 and then stopping it is all about managing the aerodynamics under the car's floor.
“As the car goes faster, the load increases and the car gets closer to the ground. The main problem here is that Mercedes has no philosophy to make the car work other than getting it down to the ground, but this causes the bounce. .
“They don't have the right aerodynamic approach to make the underfloor work.
“They're not even close to Red Bull or McLaren. McLaren's cars are as close to the ground as any other, but they skim across the track rather than hitting it, making it more stable and usable. You can get downforce.
“A loose rear end also bothered Hamilton. With the Jeddah circuit set-up, the last thing you want is the rear end flying out at 190mph.
“The W15 is supposed to solve the 'mean' rear of its predecessor, and the driver's cockpit has also been moved back to give it more feel in the rear. Apparently not.
“Hamilton felt he needed to run a higher rear wing level as the rear was too 'spooky' for him. That's why the McLaren felt like it was in another world in the high-speed corners.
“Mercedes needs to come up with a solution that provides front-end grip in slow corners without sacrificing rear-end grip in fast corners.
“All their comments suggest that they don't have that and that the car is always on a knife edge in terms of balance.
“What Mercedes and Hamilton want is an upgrade in 2023 that would push McLaren into Red Bull's closest challenger in the second half of the season.
“McLaren showed they were capable of making a big leap forward. They had a poor start to the season, but they knew exactly what and how they needed to fix it.
“Mercedes is still a long way from gaining that knowledge. I don't expect much change for them, whether it's Australia, Japan or China.”
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