Mercedes admits that there are problems in the Melbourne stage

We quoted Mercedes boss Toto Wolff, who admitted that speed in fast corners is the weak point of the 2024 car. Chief racing engineer Andrew Shovlin agrees. He admits Mercedes will have problems at the next round in Melbourne because Albert Park is full of fast corners.

Andrew Shovlin: “We didn’t perform well in Jeddah. Our speed in fast corners was not high enough and the car had a tendency to sway in such corners. This led to poor results in qualifying and in the race we could not compete with Aston Martin and McLaren.

We lost too much time in the first sector and tried to make up for the losses in the rest of the lap. Overall it was a disappointing weekend, but we contributed to it.

The team saw glimpses of speed, but found it difficult to get the settings right. It is clear that the car has weaknesses that need to be addressed.

There is still a lot of work to be done to improve before the Melbourne stage. The characteristics of the Australian circuit are similar to Jeddah and we don’t want to have another weekend like Saudi Arabia.”