- Mercedes W15 issues are not giving any hope to fans
- Team Principal Toto Wolff together with his engineering staff are at a loss for a third season now
- Mercedes W15 is even worse than its predecessors W13 and the W14
Mercedes W15 issues are not giving any hope to fans who support the Formula One team with its lead driver being Lewis Hamilton.
Team Principal Toto Wolff together with his engineering staff are at a loss for a third season now. As a matter of fact, the 2024 Mercedes W15 is even worse than its predecessors W13 and the W14 used in the 2023 and 2024 seasons respectively. The German team had anticipated that the W15 would be the vehicle that would put them back in the running for the championship in 2024.
SportsLeo details four major issues that are affecting W15’s performance in the last two races of the season.
WHAT ARE MERCEDES W15 ISSUES?
Hamilton who is leaving for Ferrari in 2025 has pointed out several Mercedes W15 issues. His hope for an eighth championship title with Mercedes seems elusive. Below are the main issues affecting the performance of the German team.
Mercedes W15. Photo/Autosport
1. Speed Cornering
The inability to corner at high speed is one of the primary issues that have been brought up so far. Hamilton first spoke about this at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah after McLaren driven by Lando Norris surprised him. He even said that Norris seemed to have been competing on another level because his W15 couldn’t race with McLaren.
He told Sky Sports after the race: “The car is good in the low speed and not so bad in the medium, but in the high speed we are miles off.”
The British driver expressed his frustration with Mercedes saying that nothing has changed in the last three seasons.
“It’s frustrating for sure to be three years in a row in almost the same position. Or it’s definitely tough, but we’ll get our heads down and we’ll keep working away, and I know everyone back at the factory is pushing as hard as they can, but we’ve definitely got to make some big changes.
“You know, we haven’t made big enough changes perhaps. You look at the three teams ahead of us, they still have different concepts to where we are in some areas so we’ve got some performance to add, that’s for sure.”
2. Porpoising
You would hope that porpoising doesn’t appear in Mercedes W15 issues given it was a setback to the W13 and W14. Sadly, Mercedes engineers haven’t solved it yet. Porpoising is an aerodynamic phenomenon that affects some Formula One cars, causing them to bob up and down rapidly at high speeds.
Despite the fact that porpoising has mostly been eliminated from the grid, Mercedes has noted that bouncing has somewhat returned in the first two rounds of 2024.
The team is trying to resolve it as soon as possible, even though it is not as much as it was with the W13. During the team’s post-Saudi Arabia debrief, Andrew Shovlin, the director of trackside engineering for Mercedes said that they experienced porpoising in the qualifying race.
Both Hamilton and teammate George Russell say that this is a complex issue that F1 teams are figuring out.
Lewis Hamilton and his W14 vehicle. Photo/Sky Sports
3. Stability
The car’s difficulties in high-speed corners have been linked to the drivers’ inability to trust the rear-end stability; Hamilton and George Russell have both experienced oversteer snaps.
Wolff acknowledges that stability is a big issue although the car has excellent speed. F1 tracks have extremely tight corners and turns. A stable car allows drivers to maintain precise control and navigate these turns and curves with ease and speed.
4. Downforce
Wolff is forthright in acknowledging that the W15 is inherently inferior to their quicker competitors as far as downforce is concerned. It is among the major Mercedes W15 issues. In addition to merely adding a larger rear wing to increase downforce, Hamilton and Russell still find it challenging in high-speed cornering. The car is massively losing the stability needed to manoeuvre the tight corners.
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