By Joe Man
There was always going to be so called ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ with the new regulations, but no one suspected that Mercedes would be in such a mess.
Amazingly they somehow found themselves second in the Constructors Championship standings before this most recent round from Imola. Now, as a result of an underwhelming display by Lewis Hamilton in particular, they find themselves third for the first time in over a decade.
This still, however, flatters them massively! Red bull have had three DNF’s, Carlos Sainz has made multiple mistakes over the last two outtings and many other teams should have beaten a Mercedes if they had not hit trouble. The sight of Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolf arguing after qualifying in Imola only confirms what we are seeing with our own eyes; Mercedes are unraveling.
The previously dominant, all-conquering team, have no shortage of issues right now.
A lot has been said about the porpoising on the straights, but its not much worse than we can see in the Ferrari’s, who are having an excellent start to the campaign.
The most telling example of their issues are the onboard cameras. The bouncing is pretty extreme but it’s the end of the straights where the problems are especially terrible. The onboards show Russell and Hamilton turning their steering wheels in all directions trying to get the car to go round and straighten up in corners. The bouncing takes away the grip and then they are oversteering all over the place. To put it simply, the car is incredible difficult to drive and almost impossible to make such a car compete with the like of Red Bull and the Scuderia.
It seems right now that the eight consecutive Constructor’s Champions have no answers to what’s currently happening, which seems unbelievable for a team so dominant even a few months ago.
We won’t get to know what the dispute between Toto and Lewis was but clearly the seven time World Champion is getting frustrated. It begs the question, is Lewis the right man for this situation?
Hamilton is the greatest driver of all time but this is a first for him. Yes, his first year at Mercedes wasn’t necessarily a winning one, but it was all heading in the right direction. Right now, they look to have no direction at all. Australia looked like a step forward and they were back hunting in the top six, albeit a long way behind the leaders on pure pace. A change in the weather at Imola however, and once again they were all over the place. Hamilton narrowly avoided being eliminated in Q1 for the second time this season. If this continues, Lewis is only going to get more frustarted. If there is a bad energy within the team, Hamilton isn’t going to help that. He has always been an emotional guy and he won’t be able to accept this. Mercedes entire season now revolves around their first updates. If it turns out they don’t make a lot of difference with the necessary changes, then their season is practically over.
George Russell is fairing a bit better in comparison, but he is a man with experience in the lower regions of the grid. Hamilton has had a beast of a car under him now for a long time and this will be feeling very foreign to him.
The crucial question is whether this team can stay together or will it fall apart. They will be desperately hoping for a bad race for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to keep them in touch. They had an opportunity with the sprint race to try to get their cars higher up for the race on Sunday and neither driver truly capatalised, despite some minor gains from the younger Brit.
It’s going to be fascinating to see how the great team respond when we head to Miami in just over a week’s time.
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