Mercedes has faced tough challenges on the F1 circuit in recent seasons, and with the upcoming 2026 regulations, there's uncertainty about their ability to turn things around. In this video, I'll explore the key factors behind Mercedes' struggles, discuss the upcoming F1 regulations, and share why I think Mercedes might not improve significantly in the near future.
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How the hell could Mercedes have not predicted that down-effect cars do porpoise? This is a multi-million dollar team we are talking about with the best minds in the world of racing sport, working for them. Also, they claim to have correlation issues. Something does not add up.
If i remember correctly car speed data through corners such as Pouhon served from 2015-2021 to suggest that perhaps mclaren often had the best “aero”
Tbh, for me, this confirms what I already thought: Mercedes is only good when they have little to no limits on how much they could spend. Because if we remember back to 2021, that was the first year of the cost cap, and what did we see that as unprecedented? The gap between Red Bull and Mercedes shrunk to nothing almost overnight. It took Mercedes getting a new engine midway through the season to even be able to compete with Red Bull at the rate they were going. I feel like the 2014-2020 era of Mercedes was fueled by them never fully understanding the car outside of the engine (which they only fully understood because the regulations were written around Mercedes technology), and everything else they just chucked concepts at a wall and threw out the ones that didn’t work. How else do you explain literally everything going on at the shit storm that is Mercedes? They never understood the car. They just pretended to while they outspent everyone. And now that they can’t, their incompetence is on full display for everyone to see. I mean, just the basic lack of understanding by Toto Wolff about how F1 concepts work and him switching concepts faster than an F1 car switches tires tells you just about everything you need to know. Mercedes isn’t a true championship team. They’ve just been handed victory by the FIA. Literally the only thing they had to do was get the team set up; that was it
Don't forget that regulations also changed in 2021, to favour the high-rake concept of the Red Bull.
this ignores that they had most of their focus on 2022 from the end of 2020. most of their development efforts went into 22. only after 21 started did they realise they needed to put a bit more into 21. the w12 was a refitted w11 for the new regs, not much more.
How the hell could Mercedes have not predicted that down-effect cars do porpoise?
Let's hope the engine is great for the customer teams. I'd love to see a Williams revival! Great video!
Williams must come back! Cheers wim!
The thing people need to realise is that these "dominations" over the years are cyclic. Until '21, the teams with the deepest pockets won the day. It was simply a question of how long one could keep it up and MB took full advantage of it as did Ferrari before them. People need to learn to take a step back and stop focussing on MB all the time. Their time at the top of the pile is over and another one is in the making for the future. No-one knnows for when though. In these cycles, teams change, key folk move around, old folk leave and new geniusses come in. We are facing a potential Ferrari and Mclaren fight for the top. With Adrian Newey leaving RB, this is inevitable. 2026 is probably going to be the first time since '22 that we may get interesting racing again. Until then get used to the carroussel - it is all you'll get until then. Next year might usher in a little wobble in the cogs, but no great shake. So I'd say, chill out, leave MB alone now and do not pay them any mind - much like one gives Alpine, WIlliams , HAAS or VCARB ...... Be sure to know this though, they will be at thetop of the pile again one day. You want proof ? Look at Mclaren, and what is being touted for Ferrari .... And the wheel turns, turns, turns and turns ........
Mercedes has not had good Formula 1 aerodynamics since the W196. There is NOT a crisis at Mercedes, George is performing incredibly well.
Is it too late to bring the W196 creators back? :D Haha yeah fair but "Mercedes probably won't be a top team in 2026" wasn't a great title hahaha
Tf are you yapping about? George is 7th in the drivers standings only two positions off Hamilton. Mercedes are being outperformed by customer teams i.e McLaren and Aston. They went from fastest in 2021 to 3rd fastest in 2022 to third/fourth fastest in 2023 to fourth fastest on a good day in 2024. It takes a special kind of delusional to believe that there's no crisis and this run of form shows they're doing "incredibly well" Also it's not 2016 anymore boomer, you don't have to keep basing your personality off hating Hillary Clinton.
Hamilton knows this and that's why he's going red.
Nonsense. His mega deal was turned down by mercedes so he looked for other suckers and found some in Italy
@@mvd4436
Mercs are engine merchants. If RBR had an engine on-par with Mercs in 2014-18, we'd probably have 10+ years of Red Bull dominance.
10:59 LOL. The French catching strays
Couldn’t help it, I don’t script my videos and sometimes I rant 😂
It is somtimes walking on ice with #team LH so you did a good job being very carefull choising your words. I guess you saw my submission to late to incorporate it into this video. Let teams have flexible aero 'cause they know already how to do that and skip the active part. That does make it ineccecery complicated. Different aero loads are neccecery to compensate for the lack of consistant PU generated energy to propel the cars constant to proper F1 speeds.
Mercedes needs to learn about how to develop a car and not redesigning the car every year
Hang on.. There is no Mercedes fans. There was just LH fans. LH fans have been ripping into the Mercedes team ever since 2022. And tearing George Russell down to prop Hamilton up. The original hate narrative that started around George Russell was all LH fans. I became a Russell fan just to defend him from all of this bile. The porpoising tech directives also hurt Mercedes pretty badly. And they ruined the 2022 regs
It took ferrari cheating(allegedly) and honda till 2020\21 too catch up with the mercedes engine. That engine was god tier and stil is on par with honda and ferrari
Great job
Do you think Merc will pull out of F1 if they become a mid fielder team? With the current brain drain, it's hard to believe that they will be fighting for wins any time soon. Being a mid field team will end up hurting the brand especially if Audi comes and beats them
Finally some good videos
The new regulations are crap. Turning F1 into Formula-E will kill the sport. Make no mistake, the new regulations will have the engine only charging the batteries, and electric motors will be what power F1 cars. This is unacceptable.
Mercedes may only own one third of the Formula 1 team currently bearing their name but Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains, the engine manufacturer, is a different entity and still wholly owned by Mercedes. The boardroom is most certainly not overly happy with recent performances. They're not "married" to Brackley and since they no longer have a controlling majority to" right the ship" (Toto Wolff and his buddy Jimmy Ratcliffe are calling the shots) one cannot rule out a withdrawal from the team. You can bet your bottom dollar that Zak Brown and his Bahraini overlords would love nothing better than McLaren becoming Mercedes' works partner once again... let Ineos F1 join the Mercedes engine customer queue instead. ;)
I think you are clearly underestimating Mercedes in the aerodynamics department. It's certainly true that the big lead between 2014 and 2016 was mainly due to the engine. But Mercedes still had the best car overall, especially from 2017 onwards. You just have to look at 2019 as an example, where Mercedes was even behind Ferrari when it came to engine power. I believe that the reason for Mercedes' poor performance since 2022 is that the new cars can no longer be built according to a peak downforce philosophy, and Mercedes is having problems finding the right compromises here. Sometimes they go too extreme and get bottoming and bouncing and the year after that they build a car that is too high and therefore generates too little downforce.
I dont think its an underestimation, more reality. In the years you've pointed out not only were their engines top or 2nd they didn't have the current brain drain they have experienced in the last 3 years and there was no cost cap or sliding scale testing to hinder them as much as now + admin was quite good. Currently and going back to 2022 it has been pretty obvious to the f1 world that the engineers don't even understand what they have built and this has also come from the engineers themselves. All this is made worse by their simulation issues which produces results they can't trust/replicate in the real world that they also have no idea how to fix or where the problem is coming from and so constant experimentation with yet no results to show hence when others are bringing upgrades they are once again running around wondering what new setup to try. Adding Complacency and refusal to change concept early enough has also left them years behind, I mean they are still dealing with bottoming out yet most other teams figure this out and cun ran lower when need be. Further simple things like pits stop have continuously gotten worse over the years. Looking at the team as a whole you're unlikely to find 1 thing they still excel at or have improved in yet they need all those problems sorted or understood latest this year before R&D for 2026 begins next year. For 2026 if they have not figure things out and corrected them things will likely remain the same considering their engine is unlikely to have the gap it had in previous years. He said it correctly if they barely understand and are behind in this regs what will become of them with a more complex iteration. I'm a fan and will continue to be but even I see no hope for us come 2026.
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They’re gonna duck out of the sport
These MassaMathics at mercedes dont work, thats the problem
Hahaha I forgot about Massamathics :P
Merc 1 because of the car, someone other then lewis could and did win the championship during their run, No one but Max could take that redbull car and dominant like he is, no hate on lewis, but Max is Max
Dude any of the top 3 drivers could dominate just like Max with that car and well oiled team that Redbull is, same as with Hamilton in their Mercedes best years.