How did Mercedes go so wrong in Brazil – and why is there light at the end of the tunnel?

Mike Elliott’s departure ahead of the Brazilian GP in 2023 looked set to complete Mercedes’ fall and rise from the post-2021 blues, but instead culminated in their “worst weekend in 13 years”, according to team boss Toto Wolff.
Mercedes have been in the wilderness for two seasons after sending their best technical brains out in boats for the biggest rule change of a generation, but returned to the scene of their latest F1 victory with high hopes after finishing second in the last two seasons. Games.
While Elliott is not solely responsible for Mercedes’ decline, the scale of the team’s decline was somewhat reduced during his reign as technical director, and many see Red Bull’s dominance as inevitable in retrospect.
It wasn’t on purpose – Mercedes were supposed to start 2022 development earlier than Red Bull – but with the team hoping to move on from the Elliott era, there was at least one worse surprise at Interlagos. . Wolff: Mercedes’ main mechanical problem

Initially, Mercedes was looking for things in Brazil. George Russell was third in FP1 and even topped Q1, before Lewis Hamilton led a third-row grid who had plenty of reason to believe they could overhaul the Aston Martin at the start of the next race day.
But it turned out that the gloomy skies of qualifying were just a foretaste of what was to come for the team, as their fortunes turned darker than even the strangest of storms to arrive on Sprint Saturday.
The team fell back in the sprint race with both drivers suffering from flat tires and Wolff was even asked after the Grand Prix if Mercedes considered switching to a pit start on Sunday to improve the set-up.
“Yes, we thought about it, but we didn’t know basically where we would have changed it, because there is a much bigger problem,” Wolff told the media. “When you think about maximizing points, it was probably the right thing to do to start that way.”

It is arguably an even more damning indictment than the team’s solitary four-point haul from the GP – their combined fifth-worst result since Hamilton joined the team in 2013 was the most they could manage.
After the race, Hamilton and Russell attributed part of their performance to Mercedes’ high-resistance gamble, but Wolff said the problem was much deeper.
“We drove the car too high, but that wasn’t the main reason for a perfect free weekend in terms of performance,” added Wolff. “Something fundamentally wrong mechanically, it’s not the rear wing and the car isn’t a bit too high, that’s the explanation for a perfect weekend.”

Where is Mercedes going next?
However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. On paper, Mercedes looks like a huge loss compared to 12 months ago when Russell led the Sao Paulo GP 1-2 and won the sprint.
However, Wolff found one very good reason to be happy. Russell’s win at Interlagos confirmed Mercedes and Elliott’s belief that their radical “zero sidefoot” concept could work.
They kept that faith all winter and turned to the 2023 Bahrain GP season opener with the W13 development, abandoning the concept only after qualifying for next year’s scrapyard.
But in stark contrast last weekend at Interlagos highlighted why Mercedes needed to change for 2024 and Wolff is confident they can do it. “It will be a completely different car next year and today proves that to be true,” said Wolff. “This confirms that, in principle, the trajectory of change is correct.
“[Last year] we came out of the Interlagos weekend completely blown away, destroying your Saturday and Sunday race. And it was like, ‘Are we doing the right thing by continuing on the current platform?’
“And now it’s really clear, it was so terrible for the whole team and I hope we can start the new season and focus on the new car.”

It’s important to remember that two seasons shouldn’t define Elliott’s career. He has been involved in all seven of Hamilton’s championships and all of Mercedes’ successes in the turbo-hybrid era, which continue to far outweigh their failures from 2022 onwards.
But while Interlagos filled up as Wolff had hoped, it may have left Elliott with the final gift of his doomed creation – the absolute certainty that only a complete restoration can return Mercedes to the championship.