Mercedes concede to 'overthinking' during latest F1 struggle

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has admitted the Brackley-based squad was guilty of “overthinking” during the sport's previous era.

A regulation change in 2022 brought back ground-effect cars, but Mercedes endured a slip in the pecking order.

Having been a consistent championship-winning outfit in the years prior, Mercedes was forced down the pecking order while Red Bull rose to become the pick of the field.

Shovlin refuted the theory that Mercedes was overly brave trying to chase pace across the last handful of years, but admitted it could have adopted a more simple approach to addressing pace concerns.

“It's difficult to say ‘too brave’ because when we've won championships, it's never been by copying,” Shovlin told media including RacingNews365.

“It’s always been by innovating and I think if you try and criticise that culture of innovation and ambition, you'll end up with a team that might be a very solid also-ran, but I don't think you'll be winning championships.

“I think there were things where we could have least said we could have copied sooner, there were certain avenues of development that we could have got onto more quickly.

“We were perhaps being too analytical and overthinking it and a simple experimental approach would have given us more progress in the early stages of the regulations.”

Mercedes faced several difficulties throughout the past four seasons and was unable to develop its way out of the challenges it faced.

While it was able to seal an odd race win, it was never a championship contender - a position it is hoping to fix this year as new rules take hold.

“When you're developing a car, there are a lot of projects that go into making a car, and every project has a risk of successful failure,” Shovlin added.

“If your cumulative risk of failure is too high, it’s probably not going to work well. You've got to have ambition.

“There are areas where you've got to be the pioneers if you want to win. But it all needs balancing, and it all needs doing in an effective way

“Ambitious projects need to be delivered, otherwise they're failures.”