Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff says the W15 is suffering at high speeds.
Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russel struggled to keep up with their opponents during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
The 7-time World Champion had a long fight with McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and was heard in the radio talking about how superior the Papaya-colored car was in the straights.
Hamilton then finished the race just one place ahead of where he started and said he feels like being ‘in a different league’ compared Mercedes’ competitors, showing his frustration as the team struggles to drastically improve for the third season in a row.
Speaking with the media after the GP, Wolff said the team doesn’t understand why the W15 is suffering at high speeds, especially through the corners.
“There is something which we don’t understand,” he said. “We are quick everywhere else pretty much.
“We know that we have a smaller rear wing, we’re compensating what we’re losing through the corners. But it’s just at high speed where we’re losing all the lap time.”
The team principal said he doesn’t believe the problem lies with the car set-up, saying, “there’s only so much you can tune here.”
“Our simulations point us in a direction and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose, where you put the right rear wing on.
“I think you’ll gain a few tenths or not if you get the set-up right or wrong, but there’s not a massive corridor of performance. It’s more a fundamental thing, that we believe that the speed should be there. We measure the downforce but we don’t find it in lap time.”
Wolff promised the Silver Arrows will “come back to Melbourne strong.”
“We are on a mission on this one. And I am 100% sure that we are going to unlock that performance gap.
“It’s been two years that there is something we need to spot, and that’s the thing to unlock. We have just got to work.
“It’s not through lack of trying. We’ve pushed so hard and we’re going to give it a massive, massive go now in the next week, with more data to understand.”