Mercedes Arrive at Jeddah With ‘Unanswered Mystery’ of Season Opening Race

All was going well for Mercedes and George Russell at the Bahrain GP before the Briton encountered an issue with his car. The power unit of the W15 started running hot, and there was a severe lack of power to the car. Addressing the issue during the race debrief on Mercedes’ official YouTube channel, James Allison claimed it had more to do with the climate rather than reliability issues with the car.

Per Allison, guessing the temperatures on race day is a bit of a gamble for each team. Their predictions for Sunday (or Saturday) are based on what they see during the practice sessions. In the Bahrain GP, Mercedes were more or less accurate with their predictions. They were within a 2° C window of temperature and had to make very few adjustments to their car. However, the team remains unaware of what went wrong with the car during the race.

“It isn’t solved yet. It’s one of the things that we got a program of work this week in the factory to try to understand the very small number of things that could possibly have changed between free practice and race. What was it that gave rise to that unexpected temperature increase?”, said Allison.

Allison added it would be a considerable relief for the team once they can pin down the issue with their car. Furthermore, he asserted that once they do, the issue wouldn’t trouble them again at any point in 2024.

Russell had a strong start to the race and even found himself P2 at one point in Bahrain. However, the rising temperatures compelled him to deploy a ‘lifting-and-coasting’ maneuver. This meant Russell had to step off the gas early during straights and turn off certain engine modes. The entire maneuver led to a major lack of lap time throughout the race and gave the competitors easy overtaking opportunities.

Toto Wolff confident on Mercedes finding the solution

The free practice sessions in Bahrain had Mercedes in close competition with Ferrari and Red Bull. However, the same wasn’t the case once racing began. Addressing the temperature issue, Toto Wolff claimed the lift-and-coast method ended up costing them an average of 0.5 seconds each lap.

The maneuver saw the W15 have 0.3 to 0.6 seconds of power unit performance off. This resulted in Russell finishing 22 seconds off-pace from P3 finisher Carlos Sainz.

George Russell and Charles Leclerc going toe-to-toe, twice! ⚔️#F1 #BahrainGP pic.twitter.com/yUIJo0CujK

— Formula 1 (@F1) March 2, 2024

Furthermore, the 26-year-old finished 47 seconds behind Max Verstappen despite being the 4th finisher after the race winner. At one point, Russell was a mere 1.7 seconds behind Verstappen. The immense difference in these times further indicates the significance of even a slight drop in power unit performances.

Wolff understands the importance of the same and is clear on his team’s goals for the race in Jeddah. He reckons the problem would be fixed before the Saudi Arabian GP, much to the delight of Mercedes fans.