Toto Wolff discussed Mercedes's 2024 challenger, W15, which hasn't shown its full potential during the first three race weekends of the season.
Mercedes promised big changes ahead of this season, wanting to close the gap to Red Bull. The German team then revealed a new car, which did indeed look very different from what they had previously.
However, they haven't been able to squeeze the promised performance out of it so far. After the third race of the season, Mercedes stands fourth in the Championship with a mere 26 points.
To put this into perspective, that is as much as Max Verstappen earned only in the first race. The team principal of Silver Arrows, Toto Wolff, recently admitted there are some core issues with W15.
Apparently, it showed real potential during some of the free practice sessions, but the performance always just disappeared once it came to qualifying. Wolff told Fox Sports Australia:
"It's a little bit the same since two years. I think this one is the best of the bad, so it's a better platform to work on, but it's still not a car that a driver feels really good about throwing into the corner at 200mph."
"We introduced new regulations two years ago, which are not so new anymore, and we are struggling. We won eight times in a row, but you can't count on that."
The issue that haunts Mercedes the most at the moment is that their on-track data don't correlate with what simulations suggest, according to the words of the team principal.
Nevertheless, the Austrian keeps repeating in various interviews that he still believes in the current concept that his team introduced this season.
Maybe the German team will take a surprising step forward once they manage to solve the issue, but for now, Wolff sees Mercedes as the fourth-fastest team:
"It’s been more difficult years and Red Bull is very much at the top and then it’s a gang of Ferrari, McLaren and maybe ourselves."
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