P1racenews AI automatic summary:
Toto Wolff thinks Mercedes may have spotted a limitation with the W15, on a weekend in Japan which saw his team fail to make good on an off-set race strategy, something the Austrian bemoaned as “awful”.
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff does not attribute his team’s lack of pace in the opening stint of the Japanese Grand Prix to track temperature, although he acknowledges the relationship between temperature and performance. Despite introducing a new car philosophy this year, the eight-time Constructors’ Champions seem to have regressed relative to their rivals. In the recent Suzuka race, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled with an ambitious one-stop strategy, finishing seventh and ninth, respectively. Wolff pointed out that the team faced issues during the race related to track temperature variations affecting performance. Mercedes currently lags over 100 points behind Red Bull, struggling to understand and optimize the ground-effects F1 cars. Wolff expressed the complexity of the car’s aero and mechanical balance, highlighting the need for correlation between the two. The team is evaluating potential limitations and the need for a different approach to improve performance.
