Engineer raises Mercedes and Toto Wolff suspicions after factory panic

Lewis Hamilton on difficult season for Mercedes in November

An F1 engineer has raised his suspicions over Mercedes and their boss Toto Wolff amid rumours there is ‘chaos and panic’ in their factor as they try and upgrade their W14 model. Lewis Hamilton has been critical of the team’s engineers for sticking with their ‘zero-pod’ concept which failed to match the pace of their rivals last year and has urged for quick changes.

Wolff agreed with Hamilton at the opening Grand Prix of the season and said the team would be ditching their current model and tasked the team’s engineers to find a solution. However, at the Australian Grand Prix earlier this month Mercedes were the only team able to compete with Max Verstappen and Red Bull.

George Russell started quickly and overtook Verstappen off the line before an unfortunate pit stop followed by a suspected cylinder failure ruined his chances. With four weeks since the Australian Grand Prix engineer and Bridgestone expert Kees van de Grint senses ‘chaos and panic’ in the Mercedes factory as they race to bring out upgrades.

He told the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com: “I liked that they stuck to their concept. They had faith in that. Now you probably think it’s not such a good concept after all.

“Then I think, what did you discuss and analyse in the winter? Because this is a late conclusion, if you have to change now and want to change a whole concept.

“That might say something about the people who left. I think the sounds are more in the panic atmosphere. You can also hear that from Wolff, he has actually already given up.”

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How different the Mercedes car will look in Baku his weekend is unclear after Hamilton was sent a reality check by the extent of the upgrades made and suggested that there won’t be a new concept in Azerbaijan next week. Meanwhile, Wolff issued an encouraging update and said that the team were on the ‘right trajectory’ from what he has seen at the factory.

Van de Grint has a theory that Mercedes might not be about to make wholesale changes to their car and Wolff’s admittance over the concept might be ‘a feint’. He added: “But, that is of course also a bit of a feint because he (Wolff) quietly hopes that things will work out somehow.”

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