F1 team suffering from serious ‘limitations with the simulation tools’ after Saudi GP

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The start to the 2024 season has been average at best for Mercedes and they appear to be suffering from some serious limitations with their simulation tools right now.

Toto Wolff would have hoped that they could have kicked on from finishing runner-up to Red Bull last year.

However, speaking on The Race Podcast, journalist Edd Straw believes there’s a bigger issue than just the car at play within the team.

Mercedes dealing with simulation tools issues

At the end of last season, both Wolff and Lewis Hamilton admitted they never wanted to see the W14 ever again.

It was a car that was difficult to drive, well off the pace of Red Bull and failed to record a single victory.

The emphasis over the winter has been on Mercedes trying to understand why they couldn’t extract as much speed as they would like out of the car.

The team have been talking about a ‘frustrating’ issue with the car’s inability to deal with high-speed parts of the track.

Mercedes appear to be having some issues with their simulation tools as the changes they’re making behind the scenes aren’t reflecting what they would expect on the track.

This means they’re going to have to use a lot of trial and error to figure out the next steps they need to take.

Mercedes have work to do to catch Red Bull and Ferrari

Talking about the new W15, Straw said: “It depends what the problems trace to because it seems clear there are some limitations with the simulation tools they’re using.

“One of the big problems they’ve got is that at certain speeds when the floor is pretty low, it’s not producing the downforce anticipated so the big question is why?

“It is fundamentally an approach-based thing, is it a tool-based thing or is it the approach hasn’t allowed them to refine the tools because they’ve been working on this ever since the start of the ground-effect era?

“There’s still something that they’re missing and that ultimately is the key to understanding why Mercedes isn’t solving this.

“They did think that wasn’t going to be a problem and it was and that for me is the biggest concern.”

Glenn Freeman added: “That’s a massive red flag isn’t it?”

Mercedes now have to fix issues with their simulation tools at the same time as making their car faster which is a very difficult combination.

Lewis Hamilton is struggling with the new car in comparison to teammate George Russell.

That will concern Wolff for now, although with the seven-time world champion moving to Ferrari in 2025, it’s not a long-term problem.

Instead, Wolff still has to decide who is going to replace the 39-year-old for next season.