Lewis Hamilton and George Russell reported having the best-feeling Mercedes car since 2021 earlier this month – but that came at a cost.
Mercedes’ W15 car has proven to be just as temperamental as its predecessors. The Silver Arrows have spent the season so far experimenting with setups to try to unlock the most pace – with little significant success to date.
Explaining their predicament, team boss Toto Wolff used this month’s races in Japan and China as examples. At Suzuka, Mercedes discovered that they had unlocked significant pace in high-speed corners.
However, that came at cost in the low speeds where gains made elsewhere were wipes away. So the effort and resources that had been put into making improvements had yielded no overall reward.