George Russell and Lewis Hamilton had their best outings of the year last time out in Montreal. Mercedes scored their first podium of the year in round nine with George Russell overtaking his team mate in the closing stages of the race to clinch the final step on the podium.

With Ferrari and Sergio Perez failing to score at all, the Mercedes result looked as though the team had turned a corner, yet their drivers were not so positive after the chequered flag fell in Canada.

“It felt like a missed opportunity, to be honest,” said Russell after the race having claimed pole position. “We [made] made a couple of mistakes out there, just pushing the limits, and paid the price for it. It was just one too many mistakes at key moments that cost us a shot of fighting with these two towards the end of the race.”

 

 

 

Hamilton despondent despite season’s best finish

Seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton who came from seventh to finish just outside the prize paying positions was even more downbeat. “It was just a really poor performance from myself,” he told assembled media. “One of the worst races that I’ve driven, lots of mistakes.

“Of course if I’d qualified better, I would’ve been in a much better position, so it is what it is. I will go back to the drawing board,” Hamilton bemoaned. So given this was Mercedes best result in nine rounds this season, why the long faces?

Since the all new ground effect regulations came into effect at the start of the 2022 season, Mercedes have suffered a number of false dawns. In both of the previous two years coming into Barcelona the team have announced big new upgrade packages that were intended to bring them back to the front, but the reality has been quite different.

Once their star performer, Lewis Hamilton decided enough is enough after two seasons of being nowhere, despite being second in the constructors’ championship last year the seven times world champion is off for Italian pastures new in 2025. Though is announced exit appears to have had the opposite effect of releasing the beast to enjoy his final season with the Mercedes family that has sponsored his career since he was 12 years of age.

Verstappen slams FIA 2026 regulations

 

 

 

Montreal a turning point?

The final straw for Lewis in 2023 was seeing a Mercedes customer outfit smash the works outfit for the first seven rounds as Aston Martin and Fernando Alonso completed six podiums in the first seven races of the year.

Almost like a relay team then McLaren, also a Mercedes customer, stepped up and from race eight scored more points than Ferrari and Mercedes to the end of the season and the team from Woking have continued their form into 2024.

So was Montreal a true turning point or just another Mercedes self delusion? Technical director James Allison believes the team have turned a corner over the past few race weekends and that the weekend in Canada was not just another flash in the pan.

“[We’re] three races into something that has been a progressively improving car,” Allison told the podcast, Beyond the grid. “It just happens that we put it on pole at this quite unusual track, but I think that the things that have given us that opportunity have been coming for a few races, they’re just rather unheralded when you’re close but no cigar.”

Verstappen reacts to online abuse

 

 

 

Mercedes blame intra-team relationships

The man hoping to turn Mercedes’ design fortunes around claims the team has found the fatal flaw which is preventing them from returning to their winning ways. 

“The way we had found of working in the previous set of rules was very effective for the previous set of rules,” Allison explained. “I don’t just mean the way we’d shape the front wing or the particular way that we handled the tyre squirt at the rear of the car; I mean the way that the key engineering groups interacted with one another in the team — the aerodynamics with vehicle dynamics, vehicle dynamics with the track, and track with both of those two groups.

“The way that we were set up in the old world worked just fine — not just fine; it worked for eight seasons on the trot, something no-one has ever done before,” [yes James we remember the dominance].

“But we to a large extent carried on with that way of working together under different circumstances and were insufficiently self-critical to recognise that there were weaknesses inherent in that approach in the new world that didn’t matter in the old. We definitely paid a price for that.”

Mercedes officially reject Hamilton replacement

 

 

 

‘We were dumb’

Adrian Newey revealed in a recent interview that his role in designing the all new Red Bull ground effect cars was largely around the suspension and front end of the car. Having studied ground effect aerodynamics early in his F1 career, the design guru aced the critical relationships around the car, while Mercedes floundered as Allison now admits.

“The cars are all so uncomfortably near to the ground in this set of rules that suspension and aerodynamics have to be really, really, really tightly bound up with one another,” continues Allison

“In the old world they needed to be cousins, but they didn’t need to be really, really properly embedded in each other’s worlds … now they are just completely in bed, and the interaction has to be very tight.

“This is more of an ‘oh God, how could we have been so dumb’ type of moment, where you see the path forward and you should’ve seen it sooner.”But 2024 is beginning to feel genuinely different,” claims the silver arrows technical boss.

Red Bull says Ferrari/McLaren are cheating

 

 

 

Mechanical or aerodynamic solutions?

Yet the claims of Allison sound somewhat hollow and as they say, two swallows do’t make a summer. Merely understanding the suspension should be more than a distant cousin to the. Rest of the car is hardly a ‘Eureka’ moment for the once dominant F1 champions.

The last four races have all been somewhat of outliers in F1-land, the kerbs at Imola, Monaco and Canada have proven difficult for the RB20 even in Max Verstappen’s skilful hands. Ferrari were no where in Canada and Piastri again demonstrated his inexperience with the Pirelli rubber, allowing Mercedes to sneak home in P4/5, their best result of the year.

Of course Allison is optimistic for the future but as he explains the battles within the team to deliver lap time has been as follows.“We’d been fighting [set-up problems] all year with springs and bars and all the mechanical accoutrements in the car, [now we’re] just attacking it with the aerodynamic characteristic of the car,” James said.

“What has changed in the last two or three races is that we’ve modified the car in such a way that it is actually has a reasonable high-to-low-speed balance and a reasonable through-corner balance.

“I think that we definitely can get the car this season to be properly competitive and to fear no tracks.”

Renault out of F1?

 

 

 

Circuit de Catalunya – the ultimate test

Bold claims indeed and this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix will be the perfect test for the former world champions. The Circuit de Catalunya has for years been used for testing and the track layout is often described as the perfect al round test for a Fomrula One car. If the car goes well in the Barcelona suburb of Montmelo, it will go well everywhere is the wellborn saying.

Allison isn’t counting his chickens just yet and cautions against over optimism stating: “While I’m pretty sure that we will make a good showing in the nearby future races, I’d be surprised if we were on pole at the next one, for example, but I am absolutely certain that we can be as fast as anybody over the coming period.”

Of course the team’s woes are not the only difficulty facing Mercedes. Lewis Hamilton is horribly out of form as the once maestro of the one lap is being trounced by his younger teammate. At 8-1 down its beginning to look like a rookie up against an experienced team mate. 

Vowles announces recruit with “high F1 accolades”

 

 

 

Barcelona has been a happy hunting ground for Lewis having claimed a record equaling six wins at the track in Barcelona. Yet Lewis has won seven times on the Ilse de Notre Dame but this didn’t improve his qualifying deficit to his team mate. Hamilton recently set the rumour mill alight by claiming he would not beat Russell in qualifying for the rest of the season, suggesting he was being nobbled by Mercedes.

Now James Allison debunks this theory stating, “I think that if you try and read into that stuff that isn’t there, like there’s somehow he’s got a systematic disadvantage on qualifying day, that’s not true and not fair. So far as we can make it, the cars are identical,” said Allison.

Despite Allison’s bullish nature, it is in all likelihood Mercedes will be at best the fourth quickest team in Spain. If RB predictions come true it could be worse for the former world champions, as the Red Bull sister team are claiming their upgrades for Catalunya are worth around a quarter of a second per lap.

Mercedes are expected to sign academy superstar Kimi Antonelli as Hamilton’s replacement, and with Toto Wolff trying to line up Max Verstappen for 2026, George Russell is on notice already that his days could be numbered within the team.

 

Team with HUGE time upgrade coming in Barcelona

 

 

 

Marko SHOCK revelation about Perez exit clause – 3 races

The much lauded ‘silly season’ this year in Formula One is slowly fizzling out to be a damp squib. When Lewis Hamilton dropped the pre-season bombshell he was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari next season, despite the ink barely having dried on his shiny new 2 year deal with the Brockley team, most F1 observers expected a proper merry-go-round with a number of drivers changing teams for next year.

The re-signing of Sergio Perez after a fairly disastrous Monaco GP immediately looked a dubious shout, then again in Canada the Mexican driver was nowhere. Knocked out in Q1 Perez had a tall task ahead of him come the race on Sunday… READ MORE