Mercedes witnessed a hideous start to the 2024 F1 season after W15 failed to live up to the pre-season expectations. With a revised concept, the car turned out to be even worse than its evil predecessors. However, the Silver Arrows never gave up and worked hard on upgrades back at the factory.
The Canada Grand Prix turned out to be Mercedes’ best weekend of the season. The front wing upgrade resulted in significant lap time gains. Hence, riding high on confidence, team principal Toto Wolff is hoping for another strong weekend in Barcelona as he believes the team has solved the jigsaw puzzle of car development.
Mercedes Hopeful Of A Better Season After Solving Correlation Crisis
Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 team registered its best weekends of the season in Montreal with a P3 and P4 finish. While George Russell claimed the pole, he lost a real chance at winning due to a costly couple of mistakes. Regardless, the front wing upgrade brought much-needed performance gains for the Silver Arrows. They finally believe that the team is headed in the right direction with respect to machinery development. Meanwhile, ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix, team principal Toto Wolff has hoped for a much better weekend in Barcelona. Notably, the Brackley-based team attained a double podium finish last year at the Barcelona circuit, and Wolff is hopeful of a repeat of the same.
Toto Wolff told Formula 1 that there is no silver bullet in F1. Mercedes cannot suddenly wake up one day and decide to copy Red Bull just because RB20 is the fastest car on the grid. They have to patiently work through their concept and find ways to improvise and improve performance. That’s exactly what the engineers back in Brackley factor have been doing so far. Additionally, Wolff claimed that the nagging correlation issues between the simulator and on-track performance have been resolved. Hence, the team can make a much better and more informed decision on the quality of upgrades they wish to enforce. “We had a clear indication of what we were missing in the jigsaw, and we put the piece in, and I think now it’s gone,” Wolff said. Therefore, now that the major fundamental issues of W15 have been resolved, the German manufacturers are hopeful of a much better run on Barcelona.
Red Bull Claps Down On Silver Arrows After Canada Results
Mercedes came alive out of the blue in Montreal following a front-wing upgrade. George Russell was on par with Max Verstappen to claim pole position. He finished P3, in what turned out to be the Silver Arrows first race podium of the year. However, Red Bull are vying to pull the German manufactures down.
As per latest rumors, Red Bull Racing have lodged an unofficial compliant with FIA over the legality of Mercedes’ front wing. Mercedes have come up with a unique front wing flap design which RB believes is way too flexible to meet FIA’s legal tests. However, FIA had already cleared the front wing ahead of it’s inception because it seemed fine in stationary position.
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