"We have bitten off more than we can chew" - Mercedes under pressure to deliver results with new car

Mercedes introduced a radically different design approach as compared to all the other teams on the grid. Its radical 'no-sidepod' design, however, has not essentially proven to be the silver bullet this season.

The team's chief technical officer, James Allison, was quick to admit that the team had been overly ambitious with its concept. Claiming the early-season struggles were a result of that, he said:

“It is a big job, it is an ambitious car, some will argue that perhaps we have bitten off more than we can chew with it. But we are very good chewers in this team and we intend to put these problems right as quickly as possible, hopefully in the next two or three races.”

Mercedes is firmly placed as the third fastest car on the grid with both Red Bull and Ferrari around half a second quicker up the road. While the team was lucky to pick up a podium in Bahrain, it was not a match for the frontrunners by any means.

Allison, however, appeared optimistic about the team's championship chances, saying:

“But in any case, we will put them right and we will get our car back at the front of the grid competing as we all intend to, to allow us to pursue our dream of championship success.”

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Mercedes claims getting on top of porpoising will determine pecking order

James Allison also admitted that Mercedes was one of the teams that got caught out by porpoising and is now hard at work to unlock the potential of the W13. Stressing that the pecking order will be determined based on each team's ability to get on top of the car's porpoising issues, he said:

“How quickly each team can get on top of it [porpoising] and fix it is going to be quite an important thing for determining what the pecking order. In the coming weeks and of course with massive, massive pressure on us to make sure we deliver this quickly, we will find improvements that get on top of the bouncing while not throwing away the underlying performance of the car in order to do so.”

Speaking of the team's emphasis on finding solutions to its issues, he said:

“We can’t obviously wait to deliver those solutions, we are hard at work back here in the factory to find them, make them, get them to the car and then enjoy the benefits of them and hopefully start to realize some of the inherent goodness that we have built into this car that should put us back up where we want to be at the front-end of the grid.”

This is the first time since 2014 that Mercedes has found itself on the backfoot with a car that is not a match for the front of the grid. It will be interesting to see if the team can come back into contention this season.