The fourth round of the season also ends with a disappointing result for Mercedes. “If we look at the results, seventh and ninth in qualifying and seventh and ninth in the race, they are clearly not the positions we want to obtain,” said Toto Wolff in the usual post-race briefing. Still, thanks to a weekend below expectations for Lance Stroll, the former world champion team managed to maintain fourth position in the Constructors’ championship with a one-point advantage over Aston Martin.
THE LAUNCH SPEC BOTTOM GUARANTEED EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE IN THE S CURVES
However, the team principal of the Anglo-German team immediately wanted to look at the many positive aspects of the Japanese weekend.
“Suzuka was one of the worst tracks for us last year. In this edition, however, we were quite close to the leaders in qualifying, and it was a surprise,” said the Austrian manager.
Lewis Hamilton missed the second row by only a tenth and a half, with an excellent performance in the fast S Curve, something that Toto Wolff was also keen to underline.
“With the W15, we went very strong in the S of the first sector, where last year we were very slow.”
The Anglo-German team is still using the floor mounted in the car in the Bahrain tests. The update brought to Bahrain was discarded after the disappointing performances in the Jeddah GP. Mercedes’ Japan specification remained that of the pre-season tests, guaranteeing a better balance.
In exchange, the W15 lost some of its low-speed performance. The Anglo-German car’s good speed in the S Curves should, therefore, not be too surprising.
As for the race, the W15s were quite slow in the first stint. “We were trying to set the race on a single-stop strategy. And we probably managed the tyres excessively,” said Toto Wolff.
“The result was a very slow first stint. If you look at when we switched to a strategy more similar to the others, we looked much more competitive.”
The 52-year-old. emphasised the W15’s pace in the last two stints.
The track temperature lowered in the last two-thirds of the race. The engineers at Brackley believe that the W15 performs better in cool conditions. However, Wolff downplayed the importance of this factor.
“There was a three-degree difference in track temperature between stint one and stint two. As far as I know, there is a relationship between our performance and track temperature.
“I don’t think this was the reason for the our negative performance in the first stint but we were simply trying to extend it to make just one stop.“
However, the W15 showed very important performances, especially in the third and final stint. At this stage of the race, the track temperature dropped by almost 10°C compared to the start. Meanwhile, the first ‘hot’ stint was problematic both in terms of performance and grip.
WOLFF: “WE HAVE MADE A BIG STEP FORWARD IN WHERE AND HOW WE WANT TO RACE THE W15.”
Since the beginning of the weekend, the comments of the Brackley team members have been constant. From Lewis Hamilton to Toto Wolff, the emphasis has been on making the W15 more consistent.
Even after the race, Wolff was keen to underline how his team made “a big step forward on where and how we want the W15 to race” in Japan.
The team is working to correct the now well-established discrepancy in load between the simulator and the track.
“We have measured the downforce, and we see it. We are simply not able to extract it in the lap time, as we should and as the simulations tell us.” stated the Austrian.
The Austrian manager went into further detail, providing an example:
“The car is so complex in terms of aerodynamic and mechanical balance, as well as correlation. We have followed a certain trajectory in recent years but without finding a full solution.”
“So we got to the point of saying, okay, we have to do something different. Because, by measuring the downforce with our sensors and pressure taps, we have 70 points of extra downforce in a particular curve in Melbourne compared to last year. But we don’t see them in the lap time.”
Mercedes has now taken a new setup direction, which seems to have produced positive results.
“We leave Suzuka not happy with the result but confident that we definitely have more to come from the W15,” concluded Toto Wolff.
