Toto Wolff has admitted that Mercedes is facing a "fundamental" problem with its W15 Formula 1 car. Throughout the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend, Lewis Hamilton complained of a lack of rear stability from the car in the high-speed sections of track, with other cars such as the McLaren better suited to those corners of the Jeddah track. George Russell finished sixth with Hamilton in ninth to follow on from fifth and seventh in Bahrain to leave Mercedes on 26 points and fourth in the standings having not been able to put pressure on the class-leading Red Bull as was hoped pre-season. Although the rest of the package remains strong, Wolff believes the team has major problems to address with its high-speed corner performance.
Where Mercedes is lacking
"There is only so much you can tune here, our simulations point us in a direction, to a set-up range that we can choose, you put the right rear-wing on and I think you gain a few tenths if you get it right or wrong," Wolff told media including RacingNews365. "There's not a massive corridor of performance, it is a more fundamental thing [that we are struggling with] as we believe that the speed so should be, we can more the downforce, but we can't find it on the laptop. "It's been two years that there is something which we ned to spot and that will be the thing to unlock. "It is not by a lack of trying, we push hard and we are going to give it a massive push in the next week or two with more data to understand to come back in Melbourne stronger. "This is a mission we are on and I am 100% certain we are going to unlock that performance. "The big factor is that we are lacking in the high-speed [corners] and we are just real weak. "We are missing downforce beyond the steps that you would have with a bigger rear-wing. "There is something which we don't understand because we are quick everywhere else, and when we have a smaller rear-wing, we compensate what we are losing through the corners but it is just in the high-speed we are losing all the lap-time."
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