Toto Wolff and Co. Only an “Average” Team Now, F1 Pundit Dishes Out Brutal Verdict for Mercedes

“Losing is never an option. Winning is a must,” said Lewis Hamilton. However, on the contrary, Lewis Hamilton hasn’t won a race in over 2 years now. And Mercedes has only won one race since the 2022 regulations were implemented. This isn’t what Mercedes is about, and Toto Wolff knows it. Challenging for the championship is now a far-fetched dream for the Silver Arrows, let alone winning it. An F1 pundit has now tagged Toto Wolff and Co.’s team as an average upper midfield team. But on what basis? 

Mercedes trashed their Zeropod concept midway through last year and followed the conventional aerodynamic design. But most of the team had already been using the concept for over a year, meaning Mercedes had to play the catch-up game. Expectations were high for the 2024 season to see what the Silver Arrows had cooked over the winter with the conventional design in place. The result, however, is not something that a Mercedes fan or team member would be proud of. 

2024 has been the worst start to a season for Mercedes since the 2012 season, with only 52 points in the first five races. Even in 2022, Mercedes had scored 95 points by the time the 5th race ended, despite having porpoising troubles. One can guarantee that Lewis Hamilton must be ecstatic about his choice to leave Mercedes and join Ferrari. And the shambolic performance at the Chinese GP only shows how much Mercedes has fallen down the performance ladder.

The 7X champ qualified P2 for the sprint race and managed to hold off the opposition to finish where he started. So far, the weekend was going great for the Brit, but then Mercedes decided to make changes to the car for qualifying and the race and left the Hamilton P18 on the grid, managing a sorry P9 in the race after constant whining on the radio about tires and rear downforce. Talking about Mercedes’ poor performances, Andrew Benson pointed out how the Silver Arrows are now just an average team.

“I think it’s something that we all have to get our heads around now,” said Andrew Benson on the F1 Chequered Flag podcast. He continued, “This is the same team that dominated F1 for 8 years apart from when Verstappen won in the very last of those years. And they’re just nowhere. They’re just a very average sort of upper midfield team now. And they are lost. They do not know why their car is not quick. It’s as simple as that. They think they’ve got good downforce, but it’s not performing the way they want to on the track.”

Adding to the misery is the fact that Lewis Hamilton will leave the team at the end of the season and move to Ferrari. It was a huge hit to the morale of the people working at Mercedes. Regardless, Toto Wolff gave updates on why the W15 has been struggling since the start of the season.

Toto Wolff’s “Knife Edge” Explanation Behind the Mercedes W15’s Poor Performance 

After Mercedes’ poor performance at the Chinese GP, one thing was made clear: the engineers don’t understand the reason why the W15 sometimes is quick but then falls off the pace. They don’t exactly know what changes are to be made to the car to make it faster, unlike McLaren did in China, where the car was faster in the race compared to the Sprint. McLaren took a step forward with the changes, whereas the Silver Arrow fell backward. Nevertheless, Toto Wolff has an explanation for the same. 

44 Lewis Hamilton GBR, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, Toto Wolff AUT, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, Peter Bonnington GBR, Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team, F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at Bahrain International Circuit on March 3, 2023 in Sakhir, Bahrain. Photo by HOCH ZWEI Sakhir Bahrain *** 44 Lewis Hamilton GBR, Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team , Toto Wolff AUT, Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team , Peter Bonnington GBR, Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team , F1 Grand Prix of Bahrain at Bahrain International Circuit on March 3, 2023 in Sakhir, Bahrain Photo by HOCH ZWEI Sakhir BahrainToto Wolff, after the Chinese GP, explained, “I think the car is a difficult car to set up and a difficult to drive, and that is why you have these oscillations in performances in my opinion. I think where the car is, where Lewis’s car was in the race, was certainly far away from the optimum and it is driving on a knife-edge. So, what is it? This is where we are. For Miami we are bringing some new bits, and it will be interesting to see how they are going to perform there.”

Do you think Mercedes are just a midfield team now who were lucky to get the competitive edge at the start of the 2014 regulations? Will Mercedes be able to bounce back with the 2026 regulations?