Mercedes ‘worry’ for F1 2024 laid bare after mysterious Sao Paulo shocker

Mercedes endured their worst performance of a difficult 2023 season at Interlagos as Lewis Hamilton tumbled to eighth, and teammate George Russell retired when running in 11th. 

• What caused Mercedes to suffer their ‘worst weekend in 13 years’?

Following positive gains in the United States and Mexico City, Mercedes’ sudden drop-off in Brazil left the team baffled, and led to a brutally honest assessment from Toto Wolff, who described his side’s performance as “inexcusable” and “miserable”. 

Analysing Mercedes’ torrid weekend after Sunday’s race, Chandhok told Sky: “I think Hamilton was only about 10 seconds away from being lapped. I think there is a lot of head-scratching going on there. 

“They need to understand as a collective group where the root of the problem is. They’ve had the highs of the past couple of races where they were quick - but let’s not forget that they got excluded in Austin. 

“You can’t fight for the championship if you’ve got these ups and downs, with no clear understanding as to why. If [they said] ‘we know we are going to struggle here, we know we are going to be weak here, we will take it on the chin’, then that’s fine. But that doesn’t seem to be the case. 

“They seem to have no clear understanding of why the highs are the highs, and the lows are the lows. That is the worry going into next year.”

Contrasting Mercedes’ fortunes with a rejuvenated McLaren, Chandhok said: “McLaren started the year nowhere but were very vocal - they said, even in testing, ‘we are going to struggle at the start of the year’. 

“Since [the Austria upgrade], they have been at the front in every type of track, every type of corner, every type of weekend. Wet, dry, they’ve been there. That gives the aero department confidence that the car is working.

“But Mercedes don’t have that. This week they were slower than the AlphaTauris, Alpines, way slower than McLaren and Red Bull and Aston Martin. It’s just confusing.” 

When it was suggested that a sole hour of practice due to the sprint format may have hurt Mercedes, fellow Sky pundit Naomi Schiff said: “I think for them if that’s the case, that will be a bit of a relief, rather than a more fundamental issue.

“But I guess at this point in the season when there’s only two races left for a World Championship-winning team, for a multiple championship-winning team, to struggle with a car for two seasons and be at this point so close to next season you’ve got to wonder are they going to stick to the same concept and keep building on it? 

“Or are they really going to go back to the drawing board now?”

Schiff added: “It’s been a couple of times this season when we’ve heard Toto really down. Today, that felt like an extreme low, from the sound of his voice. 

“I disagree slightly - last year felt like a rollercoaster, it really did feel like from one weekend to another they didn’t understand which direction the car was going, when they brought upgrades. 

“This year, it may have started that way. But it seemed like they have been building consistency. To take a step this far back in a matter of one weekend? I guess it leaves them puzzled again.”