• Home
  • News
  • Toto Wolff: Mercedes Struggling With High Speed Corners

Toto Wolff: Mercedes struggling with high-speed corners

toto-wolff-8-mar-202416

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has openly acknowledged a significant hurdle facing the squad, as issues with the W15 Formula 1 car come to the forefront.

Throughout the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, Lewis Hamilton voiced concerns over the car's rear stability, particularly in the high-speed sections of the track. 

This deficiency in performance was notably highlighted as other competitors, such as McLaren, appeared more adept at navigating these demanding corners at the Jeddah circuit.

The team's struggles were evident in the race results, with George Russell securing a sixth-place finish while Hamilton trailed behind in ninth. 

This follows a similarly lacklustre performance in Bahrain, where the team managed fifth and seventh-place finishes, leaving Mercedes languishing on 26 points and occupying fourth position in the standings. Such outcomes have dashed pre-season hopes of mounting significant pressure on the frontrunning Red Bull team.

"There is only so much you can tune here, our simulations point us in a direction, to a set-up range that we can choose, you put the right rear-wing on and I think you gain a few tenths if you get it right or wrong," Wolff told the media.

"There's not a massive corridor of performance, it is a more fundamental thing [that we are struggling with] as we believe that the speed so should be, we can more the downforce, but we can't find it on the laptop.

"It's been two years that there is something which we need to spot and that will be the thing to unlock.

"It is not by a lack of trying, we push hard and we are going to give it a massive push in the next week or two with more data to understand to come back in Melbourne stronger.

"This is a mission we are on and I am 100% certain we are going to unlock that performance.

"The big factor is that we are lacking in the high-speed [corners] and we are just real weak.

"We are missing downforce beyond the steps that you would have with a bigger rear-wing.

"There is something which we don't understand because we are quick everywhere else, and when we have a smaller rear-wing, we compensate what we are losing through the corners but it is just in the high-speed we are losing all the lap-time."

More Articles