Mercedes admit to critical error in startling F1 setback

Mercedes has acknowledged it took a wrong development path with the W16 car which has led to a lack of competitiveness at recent rounds.

While McLaren entered the year at the head of the pecking order, Mercedes also fielded a rapid car in the opening events, with George Russell bagging three podiums in the opening four grands prix.

However, in the European leg of the campaign, Mercedes slipped back in the pecking order.

Its difficult form was broken up by a Russell's win in Canada, which was accompanied by a maiden podium for Kimi Antonelli.

Speaking to select media including RacingNews365, team representative Bradley Lord highlighted it has been a tale of two halves for Mercedes.

“I think we’ve seen across the first half of the season two pretty clear halves for us,” he said.

“A half where we’ve had consistent performance, the drivers have felt confident in the car and we’ve had a gap to the fastest cars.

“We’ve been in regular podium contention, that was sort of from Melbourne up until Miami.

“From Imola to where we are now, we’ve seen a more inconsistent performance, which has had a higher peak in Canada.

“We’ve had obviously the race win and Kimi’s first podium in Canada, which was a great highlight of the season so far.

“But also, on average, we’ve been further from the field and we’ve slipped from regular podium contention to more being top five, top six territory in our average race performance.”

While Russell has been able to extract performance from the car, Antonelli has endured a more difficult period.

Prior to his 10th place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix, Antonelli bagged points just once in a seven-race stretch - albeit some of the non-scores sprouted from mechanical issues.

Nevertheless, the Italian has openly spoken about his lack of confidence in the car, an issue Mercedes is seeking to rectify.

“What the drivers are saying is that they are struggling with confidence in the car,” Lord stated. 

“So instability on corner entry and they’re not able to fully commit to the corners.

“That is costing them confidence, which is costing us performance as well. So that’s the main limitation that we’ve got at the moment.

“We are retracing our steps to unpick the many things we’ve brought to the car, what has introduced that to the car, because it definitely wasn’t the case earlier in the year and has become the case in the second quarter. That’s our main limitation.

“As a result, we've fallen back relative to not just the front of the field, but the midfield as well.

“That loss of competitiveness has put us in situations that are more borderline for getting into Q3 and how we’re racing too.”

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Mercedes is yet to find the root cause of the issue, but one answer could lie in a signifant mid-season change enforced by the FIA.

From the Spanish Grand Prix, all 10 teams were subject to tougher load tests on front wings as the governing body clamped down on flexing parts.

While Lord insisted there is likely no single cause for Mercedes' decline in form, he pointed to the rule change as a possible reason behind the slump.

“Certainly that TD, everyone has had to make changes to their car as a result, which has an influence on the handling. It's a potential factor,” Lord said.

“There's no one sort of smoking gun or single thing. It would be a combination of factors.

“That’s something that has happened in that period that I've talked about, where our performance has become more inconsistent.

“You can't say it's a sold thing, we’ve also seen strong [performance], as I said, at the highest peak of our season so far.

“But that's one of the factors that we need to consider.”