What’s going wrong with Mercedes?

By Joe Murphy

Mercedes has yet to score higher than fifth, and after a double retirement in Australia, it has fallen 29 points behind third-placed McLaren. So just what is going wrong for the former dominant force?

Even putting aside the two DNFs, the Brackley squad has struggled for performance and across the season start’s vastly different circuits of Bahrain, Jeddah and Melbourne some worrying trends have come to light.

In the heat of Saudi Arabia, it already became apparent that the W15 struggles for grip in high-speed corners, aggravated by bouncing and, according to technical director Allison, a trend has now emerged the team is less competitive in warmer conditions.

The latest data point was the gap in competitiveness between Australia’s free practice three and qualifying.

In FP3, which was held in the cooler morning, Hamilton and Russell were almost on the pace of Red Bull and Ferrari.

Yet in afternoon qualifying, when Ferrari and Red Bull both found chucks of lap time, Mercedes appeared to plateau, with Russell and Hamilton qualifying seventh and 11th respectively.

“We are starting to see a pattern emerge that most weekends we have a period in the weekend where we are feeling confident about the car, but then in the paying sessions, in qualifying and the race, that slips through our fingers,” Allison explained.