CHT wrote: ↑26 Sep 2023, 01:29
ringo wrote: ↑25 Sep 2023, 16:52
They need to improve operations for sure. Pit stops and strategy and even logistics in bringing upgrades to track.
The other teams seem to bring more each race.
Pit stops are consistently 3 seconds. The team have been resting on the laurels of their hey days. Though one could argue that if you are a lonely 4th best and you have good tyre deg, 0.6 seconds to pit stop can be clawed back on the track.
The morale of the team may have hit rock bottom as this is the first time the current Merc team has transient from multiple WDC WCC champions to 3 or 4th in the championship.
I would believe that Toto, as an owner who is paying big bucks to keep Lewis will be furious at the entire team for not producing a proper car, while teams like Mclaren and Ferrari, though not winning as well, seem to be having a much better atmosphere.
Perhaps this is some kind of psychological warfare by McLaren and Ferrari.
I don't think it is really. The mood is high at McLaren because they went from P17 to P2 which is a rarely seen turnaround. Furthermore, they don't have yet political issue with their line-up of youngster.
Ferrari had a Williams level car on high DF track at the beginning of the season + was chewing the tires. Now they were 3rd team at Suzuka, at the beginning of the year on such a track they would've fight for P10 with the Alpine. Also, they solved their tires deg issues.
Even if there's some politics with Sainz father + Santander + spanish média, the teamis gathered around the objective of bringing the team back to the top and.beating Merc in the WCC for the 2nd spot. We saw Leclerc comments at Singapore, I don't think Russell would be able to say that.
While at Mercedes the team hasn't move forward this year. The gap to RB is more or less the same, the fundamental issues of the car are still there. There's too much politics between George who is obseded by beating Lewis rather than bringing points home which led to a 75 pts deficit in the WCC which could cost Merc the 2nd place at the end of the year.
More importantly the team don't seem to know - still - where some issues come from. The usual "Friday was a disaster, we will work overnight" is getting usual now. While as Sainz mentioned at Ferrari they improved this year in "how to build up to a competitive setup since Friday", and that's why he was so competitive since Friday.