Mercedes calls meeting after Belgian GP: Performance crisis?

Mercedes Seeks Urgent Solutions After Performance Drop

The Mercedes team has called crucial meetings before the Hungarian Grand Prix, with the aim of analyzing and solving the problems that have affected their performance in the last races. Since his victory at the Canadian Grand Prix, George Russell has not managed to finish in a position higher than fifth place. Both Russell and his teammate, Andrea Kimi Antonelli, have experienced difficulties with the handling of their single-seaters. In the Belgian Grand Prix, Russell finished in fifth position, 35 seconds behind the winner, Oscar Piastri, and only five seconds ahead of Alex Albon’s Williams. Even in the coolest conditions of Spa-Francorchamps, which generally favor Mercedes, the car remained behind the competition.

We need to really understand what’s going on and why we’ve regressed so much, because these conditions today, one could argue, are ideal for us and our car, and once again, it’s been the worst performance of the season.

George Russell

Russell suspects that the tightening of regulations on front wing flex, through a technical directive (TD) at the Spanish Grand Prix, hurt Mercedes more than its rivals. The strictest tests on the flexible bodywork forced all teams to redesign their front wings for Spain, reducing the possibility of using a flexible front wing to balance the car between high and low-speed corners.

Clearly, from that point, we’ve taken a big step back. It could be as simple as going back to something we had earlier in the season. Of course, you can’t do that with the front wing, but in terms of the rest of the setup… but I don’t know, it seems quite strange how much we’ve regressed.

George Russell

Mercedes’ trackside engineering boss, Andrew Shovlin, believes the problems are more complex than simply changing the front wing in Spain, especially since the car was the best in the following round in Canada. Shovlin explains that the team needs to understand why the car, which was performing well on almost all circuits at the beginning of the year, is now presenting difficulties. Although the TD from Spain did not improve stability, the car performed well in Montreal. Shovlin adds that the instability persists despite the changes in the car’s design, and that the focus of the next races will be on determining the cause of this stability problem. Regarding potential changes for the Hungarian race, Shovlin indicated that it’s possible to modify aspects of the car, depending on the available parts. A meeting will be held with the drivers to review the changes made and ensure that efforts are focused on the correct areas.