Mercedes discover initial W15 pace drop cause after first investigation

Mercedes insist it was “small mistakes” and “small errors” that led to their Dutch Grand Prix woes with the team some 40s down on the podium.

Winning three times in four races, Mercedes went into Formula 1’s summer break as the team on the up and up. But it came to nought in Zandvoort.

Mercedes: Small mistakes, small errors …

Although George Russell lined up P4 to Lewis Hamilton’s 14th, the former wasn’t able to challenge for the podium as Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc launched his long-range attack while Oscar Piastri also bounced back on the Sunday.

The eventual result was Russell P7 but 44s down while Hamilton recovered to eight but five seconds behind his team-mate.

It was the team’s worst performance in months, reminiscent of their early-season unpredictable form.

But tech boss James Allison insists: “It won’t be as simple as, ‘oh, the track doesn’t suit the car’. Whether or not you have a good weekend is dependent on a huge number of things.

“And all of them have to be pretty much near dead on right to get what you call the true pace of the car out. And in the run-up to the shutdown, we managed to hit our stride pretty much at every track.

“We sort of went a little bit off the rails in Spa, but managed to pull it back just in time. This weekend in Zandvoort, with the weather the way it was on the Friday and the decisions we took overnight, we just didn’t manage to get the groove that we needed to, to get the best from the car.

“And small mistakes, small errors in set-up will turn you from being really quite competitive into quite mediocre. It’s tight at the top. And we didn’t get it right this weekend and had a mediocre result as a consequence.”

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Asked whether Mercedes’ new floor played a role, he replied: “Simple answer is, we don’t fully know.

“You can take some straightforward measurements and say that the downforce it was supposed to deliver looked like it was there. So at one level, you could take comfort that it worked as expected.

“But a lot of the pace of the cars in this year, particularly, is down to how well they handle. So it’s not just a question of ‘does your aero package deliver you downforce’, but is it delivering you the balanced car that you need through the corners? Is it delivering you the balanced car you need from high speed to low speed?

“And we definitely know that we didn’t have a well-balanced car this weekend. That’s where most of our pace went. Whether that was the new floor, the new aero package or not, we need to keep an open mind and something we will need to revisit in future races.

“So right now, we know it measured the downforce, but we’re not certain that it delivered good balance. Something we need to investigate as we go on through the year.”

Mercedes are fourth in the Constructors’ Championship on 276 points, 94 shy of Ferrari.

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