Mercedes has been struggling for results and performance for the last few years. Since the ground-effect era of F1 began, the eight-time Constructors’ champions have been taking heat from fans on social media for their poor performances. After yet another disappointing race this time at the Japanese GP, the Mercedes social media admin took to the team’s Instagram account to take a swipe at ‘fake fans’, who may not support them during these tough times.
They posted a picture of the W15 and the W11 and captioned it, “If you don’t love me at my: , You don’t deserve me at my”, respectively. However, in a hilarious turn of events, the Red Bull social media admin responded to the post by commenting, “…Are you ok, hun?”
This wasn’t the end of the exchange as Mercedes came back with, “We’ll PM you.” The comment, which at the time of writing has over 34k likes and over 700 replies saw the Bulls’ admin have the last laugh as they wrote, “Any time.”
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F1 Twitter also went into a frenzy after the same post was uploaded by the Silver Arrows’ admin on X (formerly Twitter). The responses were a mixed bag, however, with some fans lauding the admin for making them laugh whilst others trolled the team for their poor run of form.
The 2024 Japanese GP was yet another race where the duo of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton struggled for pace. Hamilton ended up finishing in ninth place whilst Russell scooped up six points in seventh.
Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for Mercedes?
The 2022 regulations reset threw a complex design challenge before all the 1o teams. While Red Bull, under the leadership of Adrian Newey have seemingly mastered the ground-effect cars, Mercedes dropped the ball massively.
The W13, W14, and now, the W15 have all been suffering from bouts of aerodynamic inefficiency and unpredictability. Toto Wolff agrees that the team isn’t able to correlate the data they find on their simulators with the results on track.
| Toto Wolff says the W15 “has 70 points of downforce that are not seen on the track”.
Mercedes used the floor used in the tests, which guaranteed better performance in the “S” curves in Suzuka.
However, the high temperature and wear ruined the team’s race, especially… pic.twitter.com/tOt5sCNaJn
— F1_MercHub (@F1MercHub) April 7, 2024
As the Austrian explained, it seems as though the W15 is particularly sensitive to ambient and track temperatures as the car lost a staggering 70 points of downforce from the factory simulations to the main Grand Prix that ran in higher temperatures than their simulations.
As things stand, it doesn’t seem like the Silver Arrows can improve their design philosophy overnight. Hence, the best bet for the Brackley-based team would be nailing the 2026 engine-specific regulations to mitigate the deficit they have in the aero department, to return to the front of the field.
