Mercedes believe they were losing half a second per lap through three corners at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.
Lewis Hamilton said the team were particularly uncompetitive through the track’s high-speed turns, describing it as being “like I was in a different category.”
Team principal Toto Wolff admitted “today was not a good day for us” after Sunday’s race where Hamilton finished ninth and George Russell brought the other car in sixth.
“It is clear that we are struggling with the car in the high-speed corners,” said Wolff. “We are competitive elsewhere but in three corners here we were losing about half-a-second. It was therefore incredibly difficult for the drivers to attack with.”
The team now has two weeks to regroup before the season continues in Australia. “There is so much learning we can take from these first two race weekends,” said Wolff. “We need to get our heads down to analyse, understand and improve. It’s clear that we’ve got a lot of work to do but these tough days make you better.”
The team’ trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, explained why they had “not performed well this weekend.”
“Our high-speed performance has been weak, and the car is bouncing in those corners,” he said. “That contributed to our poor qualifying but also meant we couldn’t challenge Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race. We were losing so much time in sector one that we spent the rest of the lap clawing it back.
“Overall, it has been a very frustrating weekend but ultimately one of our own making. We’ve seen glimpses of strong performance, but it’s not been easy to land the set-up in the right place and we’ve clearly got some weaknesses that still need ironing out.”
He acknowledged the Jeddah and Melbourne track layouts have some similarities. “We are going to have to work hard between now and Melbourne to improve,” he said. “The tracks are similar and we don’t want another weekend like this one.”
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2024 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
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