Toto Wolff has lamented his lack of understanding at how poorly Mercedes have been performing this season.
Both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have criticised the W15, leading Wolff to fret after their recent changes offered little improvement.
“Everything over these two years which we have seen points to that there should be much more downforce than we believe it is,” he said. “And now we’ve measured the downforce and it is there.
“But we’re just not able to extract the lap time out of it that we should, and that the simulations show us.
“And it’s not trivial. I see you looking at me like, ‘What the hell!’ Now imagine what we think.
“We are measuring downforce with our sensors and pressure tabs, and it’s saying to us that we have 70 points more downforce in a particular corner in Melbourne than we had last year.
“But, on the lap time, it is not one kilometre per hour faster. It doesn’t make any sense. So, where’s the limitation?
“I think we wanted to tick some few boxes to understand: is there any limitation that we have spotted? And I think there is.”
