Brundle sees weakened Mercedes: 'They've lost a lot of top people'
Former Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle says Mercedes are "clearly no longer the force it once was", referring to the team's dominant period led by Toto Wolff. He argues that 2024 will be a crucial year for the German racing stable.
Brundle sees weakened Mercedes
Despite finishing second in the constructors' championship, Mercedes remained 454 points behind Red Bull Racing and Lewis Hamilton and George Russell failed to win a race in the 2023 F1 season. The team seemed to suffer from the decision to stick with the zeropod concept of the W13, which caused Mercedes so many problems in 2022.
The past two years are in stark contrast to the team's dominant period since the introduction of the hybrid era, Brundle also sees. "I think there's no doubt about it, Mercedes quite clearly are not the force they were, because they didn't get the 2022 car right and they didn't fix it for 2023," the analyst said in a Q&A session on Sky Sports.
"And there has been a lot of personnel movement because they're obviously very attractive people from the era of total domination that they had," he continued. "You see it in other sports, where a group of people seemingly just couldn't lose, and then all of a sudden, they can't win. It's a mighty team, but they've got to align their stars again, and 2024 is a big year for Mercedes."
Hope they go right into the midfield. Like 6th or 7th, then all the crying every week about how Lewis has such a "bad car" will actually be true for once.
Nothing to do with the double pay plus courtesy of mainly RB then...if only they felt more appreciated, they would look past the money...and stay ? Not buying it....at the highest levels the lines blur somewhat, but if you step back far enough, quite often the correlation between leaving and more cash often becomes clearer. Its how the real world works, they have families and pensions to consider, so no hard feelings...appreciation...mmm
People have left because Mercedes didn t act like RBR in Dan Fallows case.. ( I am malicious now)
Only one team takes its former or departing employees to court....the one with the splendid work place culture
During Mercedes era, FIA has changed the regulations more often than now...This fact has played a major role...
Sure, talented people and brilliant minds come and go....this has always been the case and has surely played a part, but I don't think its the root cause......rather a combination of several factors
Merc went forward with a certain philosophy for the car, which turned out to be an utter failure....the zero sidepod concept did not work out and the team just could not understand the car. They were off and this could happen to practically any team.
However, instead of fixing the issues and ditching the zero sidepod .....they seemed to be focused on having the FIA change the floorheights for the whole grid several times, which was an utter desperate and cunning move.
Earlier this year, I just could not believe my eyes when Merc stubbornly sticked to the zero sidepod concept, all because they won 1 race in 2022, a race in which they got lucky, a race where RB was completely off with their sett up followed by parc ferme during a sprintweekend.
Once they ditched the zero side pod, the car was on the right track again......but they practically lost almost 2 years due to this blind wrong decision makings
On the other hand, the budgetcap plays a big role as well ......they no longer have unlimited resources for improvement
Anyway, I do hope that they manage to close the gap with RB, so we can have a more competitive next season ?
