George Russell has called for Mercedes to understand why there is such a big difference in the W14’s performance at high and low downforce circuits, to avoid making the same mistake next season.
Mercedes have been very strong at high downforce circuits this season, with Lewis Hamilton having claimed pole position recently at the Hungarian Grand Prix.
That was remarkably his first pole position since the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, taking his overall tally to 104 pole positions.
The seven-time World Champion also came close to finishing on the podium at the Monaco Grand Prix, a venue which sees all the cars run on extremely high downforce settings.
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Mercedes have clearly suited high downforce circuits better this season, with the W14 proving to be very poor at low downforce tracks like Monza, which hosted the Italian Grand Prix last weekend.
The Silver Arrows failed to compete with either Red Bull or Ferrari at the Italian GP last weekend, and genuinely seemed to struggle for outright pace.
At the vast majority of low downforce circuits this season, Mercedes have finished over 40 seconds behind Red Bull, a ridiculous margin to say the least.
Concerningly, Russell has admitted that Mercedes are still unsure why they’re so bad at low downforce circuits and why they go so well at high downforce venues.
“We need to understand why we have such a delta between our higher and lower downforce package,” Russell told the media including PlanetF1.com.
“We always seem to struggle at circuits like Spa, Monza, Baku, Austria, even on the medium/low downforce setting, and we always seem to be quick on the higher side.
“So there are some characteristic differences in our high and low downforce packages.
“We need to understand that and recognise what it is that’s making us more competitive, at least on the stopwatch, between the two.”
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes the team have a “few directions” to explore to try and figure out their conundrum, which has impacted their season dramatically.
Wolff doesn’t think it’s happening because of “one topic”, although he does believe that discovering a “silver bullet” will solve all their problems.
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“I think we have a few directions,” Wolff said last weekend.
“If we would know it would be much easier, but the car is just very unpredictable and lacks grip, so plenty of things which we need to tackle.
“We tend to believe in Formula 1 that there’s a silver bullet that’s going to unlock everything – I think we just need to put components together to make them work together in the car, so there’s not one topic that I would call out.”