Martin Brundle expressed disappointment with Mercedes’ lackluster performance in the Japanese Grand Prix, labeling the team’s ongoing struggle to address car issues as “very worrying.”
During the recent race at Suzuka, Mercedes endured its poorest performance in over ten years. George Russell managed only a seventh-place finish, while Lewis Hamilton trailed even further behind in ninth.
This setback adds to Mercedes’ frustrating season start, especially for Hamilton, who has yet to secure a podium finish or a race win this season, a feat he last accomplished in Saudi Arabia in 2021.
Compounding their troubles, Mercedes’ decision to pursue a one-stop strategy at Suzuka following a red flag on the opening lap proved disastrous due to excessive tire degradation.
Acknowledging the problem, Mercedes confessed that the insights gained from wind tunnel simulations aren’t effectively translating into on-track performance. This disconnect poses a significant challenge to the team’s development efforts and hinders their championship aspirations.
Brundle expressed his concern on the latest episode of the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, stating, “They’ve got to understand this car and I think that’s a grave concern for all of the people there.
“There’s a lot of very clever people, with a huge amount of resource, performance tools and budget. I’m not going to try and second guess what’s wrong with it, or state what I think is wrong with it, because if they don’t know, then I certainly don’t know.”
The primary issues plaguing Mercedes this season have been inconsistency and performance fluctuations. For instance, Hamilton labeled FP1 on Friday as his “best session of the year.” This sentiment was echoed after qualifying the next day, despite him only managing seventh place in the Saturday shootout.
However, on race day, Hamilton struggled to find any positives from his performance. Although there have been glimpses of improvement, Mercedes still struggles with erratic car behavior, preventing their drivers from consistently challenging their Red Bull and Ferrari competitors.
“They cannot get a handle on these ground-effect cars,” Brundle added. “This is the third season of these regulations. They turn up, they think they have aced it, a lot of positive noises, and then it still bounces a little bit with the porpoising.
“But their problem is, from time to time, the thing performs beautifully and they are really quite fast in phases. But, they can’t seem to reproduce that session to session, let alone day to day, let alone Grand Prix to Grand Prix.
“This is the problem they have got – this knife edge of a car that sometimes looks like they have finally sorted it and more of the time they just can’t understand it.
“When you’ve got that, when all of your tools and all your clever people don’t correlate with the stopwatch and the performance of other cars on the track, and you can’t seem to nail it down, then that’s really frustrating and I would say very worrying.”
