Mercedes unsure if new car has shed 2024 cold weather “USP”

Toto Wolff has revealed Mercedes still does not know if it has shed its Formula 1 car’s tendency to perform much better in cold conditions due to the unusual weather in Bahrain pre-season testing.

Three of the last four wins for the Silver Arrows squad in 2024 came in the Silverstone, Spa and Las Vegas races where temperatures were notably lower, while its car last season could not be coaxed into making its tyres work when conditions were hotter.

Addressing this performance inconsistency has been one of Mercedes’ key aims in the off-season.

But the rare cold and wet conditions impacting this week’s pre-season running in the desert have made it harder for the team to assess if it has been successful.

When asked by Autosport to explain what it had discovered on this matter at the test where temperatures have not risen much above 15C, Wolff initially joked: “Well, I’m a bit worried at the moment because that should be conditions where we should be two seconds quicker than everybody else!

“[That] was the only highlight last year in terms of performance in Las Vegas and we are not [that far ahead].

“So, either we’ve remedied the problem and we are more balanced through all the climate conditions or not.

“We’ve had a laugh about it, whether we lost some of that USP. We shall see. I don’t know.”

Given the sophisticated tools available to F1 teams in their simulators, Mercedes will be able to correct much of the data it has gathered so far in Bahrain and apply it to its calculations for the hotter events to come.

George Russell even said, “you’ve also got to try and think what it could have been if the temperature was 20 degrees hotter, if the wind was 180 degrees different” regarding the conditions on the opening day in Bahrain – where strong wind was the main challenge for teams.

But the simulators cannot replicate random gusts of wind that awkwardly impact handling for the drivers, which are combining with the lower temperatures this week and making Mercedes’ job harder.

With Russell finishing second on the opening day, that represents Mercedes’ best first day in Bahrain pre-season testing of the current rules era. But the team cannot be sure if that’s a sign it can consistently achieve the best results that it was missing last year.