Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says a “changed mindset” this season is helping him strike a surprisingly optimistic tone despite his team's sluggish start to its 2024 campaign.
After Mercedes’ low-key start in Bahrain, last weekend’s Saudi Arabian GP exposed a significant weakness in the W15's high-speed cornering capabilities, while bouncing has also reared its ugly head, and so far, the Brackley squad’s engineers remain without a clear explanation for the problem.
The issue offers Mercedes dim prospects in the short-term, but a calm and composed Wolff is fending off the frustrations that plagued previous challenging seasons.
The Austrian is keeping his full faith in his team’s ability to overcome the early hurdle, and it’s a shift in attitude that suggests a new approach to Mercedes’ recovery efforts.
“I've changed my mindset,” he said in Jeddah, quoted by Motorsport.com. “I don't think that additional pressure on all of us makes it better.
“I think we have a problem with the physics. It is not by lack of trying or by the mindset or the motivation or energies. All of that is there, and I can see the buzz in the organisation.
“As racers, when we have such [disappointing] results, you're feeling down, but we're trying to change that with the right motivation for the week that comes.
“That's why we are believing that we can turn this around. We believe that our organisation can dig ourselves out. I'm 100% sure we can.”
While Mercedes' current on-track performance might seem reminiscent of past struggles, Wolff insists there's a crucial distinction this time around: the team's understanding of the car's underlying concept has significantly improved.
Mercedes may be on the right track with the car's overall design, but specific technical details or adjustments are needed to unlock its full potential.
“We had so many unknowns in the last year,” he said. “Where we started, we said, ‘okay this could be a reason’ and ‘this could be a reason’ and ‘this could be a reason.’ And we fixed that.
“I can see from the sensors that we have what we needed. But there is still this behaviour of the car in a certain speed range, where our sensors and simulation say this is where we should have the downforce, and we are not having it.
“This team has not been overconfident. We are probably the other way around. We see that glass half empty always. And that attitude stays, but this is also the attitude to fix it.”
While Mercedes has inherited a wealth of knowledge and lessons from its troubles in the past two years, Wolff acknowledged that applying its learnings and resolving its current limitations won‘t propel its W15 to the head of the grid.
“It is a different confidence that I have in the group this time around,” he said. “At a certain stage, you're basically ticking all the boxes of the unknown, and where we are today, it's pretty clear where it points to. It's just my feeling that we will come on top.
“Is this good enough to beat a Max [Verstappen] in a Red Bull? No, it's not. But at least bringing ourselves into a position of fighting for podiums and being right there, I'm 100% sure we are going to get there.”
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