As Mercedes continues to search for answers to its problems, Lewis Hamilton had one of his worst qualifying sessions for his team. The Briton finished 16th, but will start 15th after the withdrawal of Mick Schumacher.
While Red Bull and Ferrari appear to be one step ahead, Mercedes is still unable to tap into the potential it believes lies within the W13 . Reflecting on where the team stands, team principal Toto Wolff is clear that they need to be closer to the front.
“We love competition,” explained Wolff. “We had a really good run where we were strong for eight years, not always, but we managed to get to the top.”
“Now, I feel like we’re a bit like 2013, when we weren’t at the level of Red Bull and probably not at the level of Ferrari either, but we’re still fighting and that’s how I feel at the moment.
“We need to fight. It is totally unacceptable where we are in terms of performance. We are third and it is simply not an option to stay where we are.”
Hamilton ‘s disappointing qualifying session was due to a wrong decision with the car setup. While not that dissimilar to Russell’s, the decision to focus more on the front meant the Briton had no confidence in the rear of his car.
“We were experimenting to find out where the sweet spot of the car is,” Wolff reported. “The result was that basically we had problems at the rear of the car. And that explains that loss in performance.
While porpoising remains Mercedes ‘ biggest headache at the moment, the team knows that’s not its only problem, as it faces an overweight car without a low enough rear wing.
Wolff added: “You can see that between Lewis’ performance and George’s performance not a lot changed, but it was big enough to have dramatic consequences on the performance of the car between crashing out of Q1 and going into Q3 solidly. That’s why this car is so difficult to set up.”
“We had a lower drag rear wing, we removed the Gurney (small strip placed on the outer edge of an aerodynamic element), but it still wasn’t enough to reduce the car’s drag.”
“But overall I would say that’s not the only problem. We have a lot of parts of the car that don’t work, that we don’t understand, that don’t perform well enough. And this is not where we all expect the car to be.
