BREAKING:Toto Wolff has admitted the upgraded floor Mercedes....

Mercedes’ Performance Falters at Dutch Grand Prix as Upgraded Floor Comes Under Scrutiny

Mercedes’ strong run of form took a hit at the Dutch Grand Prix, as George Russell finished seventh and his teammate Lewis Hamilton managed only eighth. The team’s sudden drop in performance has raised questions, particularly regarding the new upgraded floor that the Silver Arrows introduced this weekend.

Mercedes, who had been on a high with victories in three of the last four races before the summer break, found themselves struggling at Zandvoort. Lando Norris of McLaren claimed a dominant win, leaving Mercedes to pick up the pieces and assess what went wrong. The new floor, which had been used for the second time this season, is now under intense scrutiny.

Team principal Toto Wolff has admitted that the upgraded floor might have played a significant role in the team’s poor performance. The floor was first introduced at Spa, where Mercedes abandoned it after Friday practice. Without the new floor, the team managed to secure a one-two finish, only for Russell’s victory to be stripped due to his car being under legal weight.

Reflecting on the weekend, Wolff commented, “I think these cars are sometimes a surprise-box. We’ve had six podiums in a row, and that doesn’t look like the car three weeks ago that was first and second, at least first on merit. You can’t really end up with a result like this without any major factor playing, and that’s something we need to analyze in the next few days until Monza.”

With the Italian Grand Prix just days away, Wolff emphasized the need for a thorough investigation into what went wrong. “Was it because we put something on the car that didn’t help? Did we engineer something into the car that wasn’t good? Then how do you justify these swings of performance? Sometimes we looked really good this weekend, and then obviously today, in terms of degradation, that was not very impressive.”

The weekend’s challenging weather conditions further complicated matters for Mercedes. Much of the three practice sessions were lost to bad weather, limiting the team’s ability to gather data and assess the impact of the upgraded floor. Wolff explained that the lack of running made it difficult to make informed decisions, potentially leading to the team’s underwhelming performance.

“We back-to-backed the update kit on Friday, which was at the end left us with not a lot of data – the update kit that we put onto the car in Spa on Friday and then took off again. And then obviously with the lack of running, like everybody else, maybe we didn’t decide the right things for the car. So, there could be a few factors in play that contributed to this non-performance,” Wolff said.

When asked if the issue was specifically related to the floor, Wolff was cautious not to draw conclusions too quickly. “I don’t want to jump to conclusions too quickly because we’re going to look at it in the coming days and hopefully try to find clues in the data. Was it a setup? Was it the track? What is it that we got wrong? Was it the floor that we put on the car? Was it all of this together?”

George Russell, who started from fourth on the grid, also expressed his confusion over the team’s performance. After a strong qualifying, Russell found himself lacking pace during the race, eventually finishing seventh. “I don’t really understand what has happened, in all honesty. We were slow on all three tyres and went backwards. It was weird how we qualified fourth and were consistently just behind the three cars in front and in front of the Ferrari and it all disappeared,” Russell remarked.

Meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton, who started from 14th after a disappointing qualifying session and a grid penalty, was more optimistic about his race pace. Despite finishing eighth, Hamilton believed that he could have competed for a podium had he started higher up the grid. “I was much happier today. I was moving forwards, progressing, moving in the right direction, just too far back unfortunately,” he said.

As Mercedes heads to Monza, the team will be eager to resolve the issues and return to form. The next few days will be crucial as they analyze the data and seek to regain their competitive edge.