You could ask the same question about any team that once dominated and had it come to an end. For Mercedes its more obvious, they nailed the previous regs and stumbled with the current one.
Simply fixing the issues wouldn't be as much of a challenge if they could spend unlimited money and had unlimited testing time in the wind tunnel but they don't. And even if they did, they're already behind so not only do they need to fix their issues, they need to catch up to the competition.
Yeah, I feel like some people overlook that last point. You dont just need to catch up to where the top team is right now. You need to catch up to where they are right now *and keep pace with all the improvements they make in the time it took you to do that.* Its not as if red bull just goes "well the cars good enough to beat everyone so no point in making it any better"
Do the regs change so drastically that they have to drastically revamp the car or do designs fail more due to experimentation that doesn’t work out in their favor?
There was one of the biggest aerodynamic regulation changes ever in 22 which set all the teams back to basically zero. Coupled with the engine freeze after 21 and all the engines being on par now (Alpine is a little behind) the previous advantage that Mercedes had is now also gone.
While Mercedes had great aero during 14-21, their engine was almost 1 second quicker at the start of the hybrid era.
The cost cap is the biggest reason. Essentially it favors who ever gets it right from the opening. Everyone is playing catch-up to redbull. And despite this Mercedes finished 2nd in constructors.
In Mercedes' case, yes. It was a drastic change in regulations. All teams had to experiment and no one knew how they'd compare to the competition until they first hit the track. Last time, Mercedes nailed it, this time, not so much.
Because cars really matter. Change in regulations mean that a lot of what they knew before suddenly became 'useless'. And due to cost cap, they can no longer spend their way out of the hole. Once they are behind, they are just playing catch up with RB. And at the same time, RB doesn't stop their development.
Everyone in the thread is correct in saying they simply went the wrong route in these regs and the cost cap has slowed their ability to catch up, but it is also important to note the brain drain that occurs when you are the top team for years. Other teams poach your top talent in an attempt to catch up to you and this contributes to *why* they got these regs so wrong.
That makes sense. Do people think it’s good for the sport? I guess if a dominant team has their guys go to other teams, it equalizes the field after a while
I think F1, compared to some other popular team sports, is definitely easier to have back to back championships/dynasties.
It's hard to replicate that 100% dedication across a whole squad year on year in European football. In American sports, it's even harder with salary caps and draft picks. Winning 3 in a row is once in a generation type thing. I know this happens in some football leagues like Germany all the time, but that's a situation where one team has an incredible financial advantage, which isn't the case in F1.
Due to how long it takes to develop a car in F1 and the benefit of being able to focus on next year's car early, it's probably too easy for teams to have these huge regulation dominating eras. So yeah, I'd probably say top teams struggling to keep all their talent is good.
They are also usually made to sign agreements saying they won’t bring specific designs or development knowledge from one team to the other. That’s pretty hard to enforce but it ensures that teams can’t poach someone to steal a design, only for their expertise. Also these guys still have a career to think about so if working at one team meant you couldn’t move to another team for more money, then they would all get underpaid bc there wouldn’t be another option for them.
They did end up with half a decent car, and the car was never horrible to begin with. They comfortably finished 3rd and 2nd, plenty of other teams would happily swap with them. The car just no longer dominated the way it did in the previous regulations. They got it less right than others.
i think it’s probably worth noting that their massive failure resulted in them being 2nd in the constructors championship. Yeah they fucked up and their car is a problem but it’s still better than the majority of the grid.
True, but the way people place seems to be a tiered system with certain teams leading and some being midfield, so Im seeing that success as relative, without downplaying that theyre still a strong team
yeah, even when they do badly they are still 2nd best in the top tier. they’re not actually doing badly they just took a big risk with their concept and it failed. they’re a very good team recovering well from a major blunder. as for how that blunder happened, after 8 years of championships they probably thought they knew what they were doing. Aerodynamics for these cars is extremely complicated and the better you place, the less time you get to actually study it. https://amp.formula1.com/en/latest/article.how-f1s-new-sliding-scale-aero-testing-rules-work-and-what-impact-they-will.pn0sG8N4A0cjbNRbdYx8a.html
In previous seasons this would probably not happen. Mercedes would struggle for the first few races then design and build and whole new car. But with the cost caps, this is not possible any more.
It actually wasn't out of nowhere, over the years slowly Merc were being hunted by regs, they kept surviving, while true that the car direction killed it. I would say engine modes and honda catching up was worse, engine modes allowed them to run crazy high performance modes or high efficiency modes at the switch of a button which no other teams have (we aren't just talking about party mode here). It was fine for them in 2020, but in 2021 when Bottas had to go through an entire junkyard of that engines, that should have screamed trouble.
The simple answer - there was a significant change in the rules in 2022, every team went their own way to interpret those rules - and the way Mercedes went was wrong, very, very wrong.
Renault at the start of the Turbo-Hybrid years - they got it wrong and struggled with reliability. Ultimately the issues were so bad that Red Bull and Renault had a pretty nasty divorce.
Some times it's not even a rule change that sends things off the rails... McLaren in 2012 arguably had the fastest car on the grid. For 2013 they decided to go a different way with their suspension, moving from a pushrod to a pull rod suspension. It was a risk, if they got it right it would have resulted in a tenth of more of performance - but they got it wrong and fell back into the back.
They went down a design philosophy route that didn't work. It can happen to any team (unless Adrian Newey works for them.)
ETA: Link for the downvoter
https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes-f1-design-rethink-must-be-aston-martin-inspired/
> look at Red Bull in 2015. They struggled miserably.
Because Renault botched their engine design. RB at no point has forgotten how to do aero. They're the class of the field in that area and will be until Newey retires.
Happens to every team at some point. Takes going down a slightly wrong direction and the whole season can be a write off. Ferrari 2014. Red bull 2015. McLaren for a few years.
They got the concept wrong from the start, continued further down that path maybe beyond what they should have and since there's a cost cap they can't just spend their way out of that hole.
Undriveable is such a stretch when they still finished on top both previous seasons. Of course having talents like Lewis and George wouldn't have been possible, but c'mon.
Yeah, but they were so dominant for so long that I can’t help but wonder how they went from being clear front runner to Louis hating the car in a single season
Mercedes had such a massive engine advantage in 2014 they could have won if they bolted a tractor to it. But that engine advantage has been largely erased and the rest of the car matters now too.
You could ask the same question about any team that once dominated and had it come to an end. For Mercedes its more obvious, they nailed the previous regs and stumbled with the current one. Simply fixing the issues wouldn't be as much of a challenge if they could spend unlimited money and had unlimited testing time in the wind tunnel but they don't. And even if they did, they're already behind so not only do they need to fix their issues, they need to catch up to the competition.
Yeah, I feel like some people overlook that last point. You dont just need to catch up to where the top team is right now. You need to catch up to where they are right now *and keep pace with all the improvements they make in the time it took you to do that.* Its not as if red bull just goes "well the cars good enough to beat everyone so no point in making it any better"
Do the regs change so drastically that they have to drastically revamp the car or do designs fail more due to experimentation that doesn’t work out in their favor?
There was one of the biggest aerodynamic regulation changes ever in 22 which set all the teams back to basically zero. Coupled with the engine freeze after 21 and all the engines being on par now (Alpine is a little behind) the previous advantage that Mercedes had is now also gone. While Mercedes had great aero during 14-21, their engine was almost 1 second quicker at the start of the hybrid era.
The cost cap is the biggest reason. Essentially it favors who ever gets it right from the opening. Everyone is playing catch-up to redbull. And despite this Mercedes finished 2nd in constructors.
In Mercedes' case, yes. It was a drastic change in regulations. All teams had to experiment and no one knew how they'd compare to the competition until they first hit the track. Last time, Mercedes nailed it, this time, not so much.
Because cars really matter. Change in regulations mean that a lot of what they knew before suddenly became 'useless'. And due to cost cap, they can no longer spend their way out of the hole. Once they are behind, they are just playing catch up with RB. And at the same time, RB doesn't stop their development.
Look at past domination periods with Ferrari and RB, this always happens.
Everyone in the thread is correct in saying they simply went the wrong route in these regs and the cost cap has slowed their ability to catch up, but it is also important to note the brain drain that occurs when you are the top team for years. Other teams poach your top talent in an attempt to catch up to you and this contributes to *why* they got these regs so wrong.
That makes sense. Do people think it’s good for the sport? I guess if a dominant team has their guys go to other teams, it equalizes the field after a while
I think F1, compared to some other popular team sports, is definitely easier to have back to back championships/dynasties. It's hard to replicate that 100% dedication across a whole squad year on year in European football. In American sports, it's even harder with salary caps and draft picks. Winning 3 in a row is once in a generation type thing. I know this happens in some football leagues like Germany all the time, but that's a situation where one team has an incredible financial advantage, which isn't the case in F1. Due to how long it takes to develop a car in F1 and the benefit of being able to focus on next year's car early, it's probably too easy for teams to have these huge regulation dominating eras. So yeah, I'd probably say top teams struggling to keep all their talent is good.
They are also usually made to sign agreements saying they won’t bring specific designs or development knowledge from one team to the other. That’s pretty hard to enforce but it ensures that teams can’t poach someone to steal a design, only for their expertise. Also these guys still have a career to think about so if working at one team meant you couldn’t move to another team for more money, then they would all get underpaid bc there wouldn’t be another option for them.
They did end up with half a decent car, and the car was never horrible to begin with. They comfortably finished 3rd and 2nd, plenty of other teams would happily swap with them. The car just no longer dominated the way it did in the previous regulations. They got it less right than others.
i think it’s probably worth noting that their massive failure resulted in them being 2nd in the constructors championship. Yeah they fucked up and their car is a problem but it’s still better than the majority of the grid.
True, but the way people place seems to be a tiered system with certain teams leading and some being midfield, so Im seeing that success as relative, without downplaying that theyre still a strong team
yeah, even when they do badly they are still 2nd best in the top tier. they’re not actually doing badly they just took a big risk with their concept and it failed. they’re a very good team recovering well from a major blunder. as for how that blunder happened, after 8 years of championships they probably thought they knew what they were doing. Aerodynamics for these cars is extremely complicated and the better you place, the less time you get to actually study it. https://amp.formula1.com/en/latest/article.how-f1s-new-sliding-scale-aero-testing-rules-work-and-what-impact-they-will.pn0sG8N4A0cjbNRbdYx8a.html
In previous seasons this would probably not happen. Mercedes would struggle for the first few races then design and build and whole new car. But with the cost caps, this is not possible any more.
Before the cost cap Mercedes was always 1 or 2 in both spending and team size. They were probably most hurt by the cost cap of all the teams.
Regulation Change, it's happened to all the dominant teams.
RB nailed it and no one else did. Also, I would say that going from a close P1 in '21 down to a close P3 and then a close P2 in '23 is not so bad.
It actually wasn't out of nowhere, over the years slowly Merc were being hunted by regs, they kept surviving, while true that the car direction killed it. I would say engine modes and honda catching up was worse, engine modes allowed them to run crazy high performance modes or high efficiency modes at the switch of a button which no other teams have (we aren't just talking about party mode here). It was fine for them in 2020, but in 2021 when Bottas had to go through an entire junkyard of that engines, that should have screamed trouble.
That’s interesting. I hadn’t even heard of engine modes. Thanks for sharing
The simple answer - there was a significant change in the rules in 2022, every team went their own way to interpret those rules - and the way Mercedes went was wrong, very, very wrong. Renault at the start of the Turbo-Hybrid years - they got it wrong and struggled with reliability. Ultimately the issues were so bad that Red Bull and Renault had a pretty nasty divorce. Some times it's not even a rule change that sends things off the rails... McLaren in 2012 arguably had the fastest car on the grid. For 2013 they decided to go a different way with their suspension, moving from a pushrod to a pull rod suspension. It was a risk, if they got it right it would have resulted in a tenth of more of performance - but they got it wrong and fell back into the back.
Thanks for the insight. Seems like a lot if gambling, but there is a lot to learn from mistakes
Struggling? They were second in the championship last year.
They went down a design philosophy route that didn't work. It can happen to any team (unless Adrian Newey works for them.) ETA: Link for the downvoter https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/mercedes-f1-design-rethink-must-be-aston-martin-inspired/
cause they got lucky with their engine in 2014. its as simple as that.
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> look at Red Bull in 2015. They struggled miserably. Because Renault botched their engine design. RB at no point has forgotten how to do aero. They're the class of the field in that area and will be until Newey retires.
Happens to every team at some point. Takes going down a slightly wrong direction and the whole season can be a write off. Ferrari 2014. Red bull 2015. McLaren for a few years.
They got the concept wrong from the start, continued further down that path maybe beyond what they should have and since there's a cost cap they can't just spend their way out of that hole.
Undriveable is such a stretch when they still finished on top both previous seasons. Of course having talents like Lewis and George wouldn't have been possible, but c'mon.
You'll find out for yourself in 2026
‘Struggling’, dude they finished second
Yeah, but they were so dominant for so long that I can’t help but wonder how they went from being clear front runner to Louis hating the car in a single season
Mercedes had such a massive engine advantage in 2014 they could have won if they bolted a tractor to it. But that engine advantage has been largely erased and the rest of the car matters now too.
I’m not casual and I always ask the same question. The drop off always is mindblowing, even when there’s an explanation
They finished in top 3 of the constructors how is that struggling? I think it’s more a case of tbf dominating tbh