Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s turbulent F1 start set to continue after Mercedes admits facing “fundamental” issues with W15

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has said that there are "fundamental" issues in their 2024 F1 challenger, the W15. This has cast doubt over Lewis Hamilton and George Russell's ability to push towards the top of the grid.

In what is his final season with the Brackley-based team, Lewis Hamilton was expected to compete at the top with the W15. The team has suffered a major drawback in performance for two consecutive seasons and looked to cut their gap to frontrunners Red Bull.

However, in the first two rounds of the 2024 F1 season, the W15 has looked relatively slow. In Jeddah, Lewis Hamilton faced issues overtaking Lando Norris' McLaren for P8. He complained on the radio about the latter's fast pace on the faster parts of the track.

Toto Wolff highlighted this issue while speaking to the media including Sportskeeda, revealing that the team is failing to understand something.

"There is something which we don't understand," Wolff said. "We are quick everywhere else pretty much."

He also spoke about the car's issue on the fast parts of the track, further stating that the issue does not lie with the setup of the car.

"We know that we have a smaller rear wing, we're compensating what we're losing through the corners. But it's just at high speed where we're losing all the lap time," he said.

"I think that's a biggie. There's only so much you can tune here. Our simulations point us in a direction and this is the kind of set-up range that we then choose, where you put the right rear wing on," Wolff added.

Despite modifying the car's design concept during the length of the earlier F1 season, Wolff still feels that the issue with Mercedes is in the fundamentals of the W15. He said:

"I think you'll gain a few tenths or not if you get the set-up right or wrong, but there's not a massive corridor of performance. It's more a fundamental thing, that we believe that the speed should be there. We measure the downforce but we don't find it in lap time."

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Lewis Hamilton breaks silence on Adrian Newey's future at Red Bull

Lewis Hamilton will join Ferrari from the 2025 season in what has been labeled as one of the biggest moves in the history of F1. The seven-time world champion has been racing with Mercedes since the 2013 season and has become the face of the team.

Soon after his shift to Ferrari in the 2025 season was announced, Red Bull's team principal, Christian Horner was under allegations of inappropriate behavior with a female employee. Although an internal investigation absolved him of the charges, there has been much turmoil within the team. It has further been speculated that Max Verstappen might be moving away from the team, as well as their aero wizard Adrian Newey.

Given this, Lewis Hamilton was asked if Adrian Newey might find his way to Ferrari, too. Speaking to the media at Jeddah for the 2024 F1 Saudi Arabian GP, he said that "anything's possible" in F1.

“I think my move has shown that anything’s possible and it’s going to be a really interesting next six months or so...In terms of Adrian, having worked within the team [Red Bull], I know obviously Adrian gets all the praise for everybody’s work. I know he’s a huge part of it, of course, but I know there are so many engineers in the background that are a huge part of developing the team and the car that they have and it’s not down to one person,” Hamilton said.

Lewis Hamilton further said that he cannot definitely comment on Newey's future currently.

“So it’s not my decision. I’m competing against him this year at the moment, so I can’t really talk about next year so far just yet,” he added.