Mercedes has been struggling since the cost cap era started in 2022. It was an epic downfall of the German outfit after dominating the grid over eight years in a row. The first year with the ground-effect regulations saw the Brackley team win a single race in Brazil. And that’s it. They have remained winless since 2023. Even more bad news came their way ahead of the 2024 season. Sir Lewis Hamilton, who stayed with them for more than a decade, will switch to the Prancing Horse in 2025. In the case of the seven-time champion, the last time he won came in the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
He has been winless for more than just a couple of years. Moreover, Hamilton had the worst start to a season in his 17-year-long career in 2024. Clearly, the seven-time champion driver is not happy with W15. However, his young teammate George Russell still had a better time with the car so far this season. But there are a lot of issues the team still needs to fix. Lately, James Allison, the technical director of the Silver Arrows, mentioned that their new upgrades will try to solve the “Underlying balance issue.”
Mercedes Trying To Solve “Their Underlying Balance Issue” With New Upgrades
In 2024, Mercedes had the worst start to an F1 campaign since the 2011 season. The Chinese Grand Prix this year saw the Silver Arrows have a 7th and a 9th place finish. Later, Toto Wolff, the team principal, said that they need to stop fixating on talking about the “Bright spots.” The technical director of the Brackley team echoed Wolff’s reaction after the performance at the Chinese Grand Prix. According to Motorsportweek.com, James Allison mentioned that they will add upgrades to their “Unpredictable car” ahead of the next round in Miami. During the video review of Mercedes, Allison talked about the new upgrade package coming to the W15 car.
This package will have components that, hopefully for the Silver Arrows, will rectify their “Underlying balance issues.” Currently, that balance is causing them difficulty. Moreover, James Allison explained how difficult it was to talk about upgrades after a tough weekend in China. However, the technical director likes to believe that a time will come when they will be on the front foot again and execute their plans successfully. However, looking at the tough phase they are going through now, Allison said those possible good days “Can’t come soon enough.”
Why The Silver Arrows Are Not Able To Understand The Car Yet?
It has been three years, but still the Brackley team has not found a solution to get matching results between the simulations and the on-track performance. There is a correlation issue the team is facing problems with. Moreover, James Allison said after the race in Shanghai that their problems accentuated in China that cost the race for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.
Allison admits that all year long, they had a front-limited car. The car is mostly good at low-speed corners, but when it gets to high-speed circuits like in Japan, it is really bad. Albeit, there is a long time remaining this season, but with a bad car like W15, they won’t go too far.
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