Mercedes is still unable to cope with its car and seems to be wandering in an attempt to get out of an unenviable situation.
So Toto Wolff said after the race in Miami that he does not rule out that the team will return to the old specification, more precisely the one with wider suction cups that was seen at the presentation and test in Barcelona.
The team has moved from Bahrain to a radical design where the hips are very narrow and packed in such a way as to allow a large amount of air to flow towards the rear end.
Although many were surprised by this solution and believed that it would bring a great advantage to Mercedes, it did not happen.
In fact, the opposite happened, as Mercedes engineers could not understand the data they received from the track, and the team was thus unable to extract maximum performance from the car.
Mercedes is the only team with such a solution of side suction cups, and a few weeks ago we could read the statement of Haas boss Guenther Steiner, who said that his team also tried this solution, but that they quickly realized that it brings nothing.
That’s why Toto Wolff now admits that at some point the Mercedes of my ode would return to a more classic side intake design.
“I can’t rule anything out. However, the group of people who came up with this solution have produced some fantastic cars in the past, and we believe that this was the right path. The next race is in Barcelona and there we will really be able to compare what we have now with what we saw in February when we used wider suction cups, ”said Wolff.
However, he believes that the old specification on paper is much slower, so the team will stick to the current solution for now.’
“We don’t look at the next yard because we like something more, because what we have is still good. It is still a priority for us to understand what we have before we make the decision to move to a different concept. How do we know if something is good or not? We will have the answer to that question after Barcelona. This is a real test. “After that, we will be able to look in the mirror and ask ourselves if we were wrong or not,” Wolff said.
Mercedes is safe in third place in the constructors’ championship, but the gap behind Ferrari and Red Bull is growing from race to race.
