Toto Wolff, Mercedes Formula 1 team principal, says the team’s struggles are linked to correlation issues rather than “dogmatism” at the team.
There has been issue of wind tunnel data correlation with on-track performance which has led to the team struggles.
Last year, the drivers complained about porpoising and bouncing issues. This year both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled to handle rear end of the car.
Currently, Mercedes had decided to completely alter the 2024 design concept. It decided to drop its design architecture in a bid to develop a more handy and predictable car.
However, that could not yield the intended results because W15 proved difficult to handle. Wolff says that car is not behaving according to wind tunnel findings.
“When I look at the positives, I think we took many potential root causes out of the equation,” Wolff said.
“We weren’t sure about our suspension. We weren’t sure about the stiffness of our gearbox carrier. and we had a vibrating steering rack. All of those things have disappeared.
“But fundamentally, whatever we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate with what’s happening on the track.”
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The Austrian believes all issues pointed out to the data interpretation. He did not point out any member of the staff, but believes its a generic issue with data translation.
He continued: “It is not a single person that says, ‘I would interpret that data in this way’ and because of a dogma, because of dogmatism, we’re not making any progress.
“I don’t see dogmatism. I see an open environment where people share, where people take themselves by the nose and say, ‘Maybe in my area we are making mistakes’.”
Wolff stood for ‘no blame’ culture at the Mercedes and he takes pride in it.
He continued: “It’s so tough in my career, in everything I’ve done before, be it in finance and investment, that you know which screws to turn.
“Sometimes it takes time because back in my Williams days, I knew what was missing.
“But here, I don’t think we are missing something. It is just a complication of what’s happening with the car that we can’t see. It’s like an on-off switch.”
