How Mercedes’ key F1 trait remains in place

But it’s much harder staying true to the path when pain repeats itself weekend after weekend, and the fightback at times struggles to gain momentum.

As the German manufacturer nears the launch of its all-new 2024 car, after two years where it has faced its fair share of disappointment (although it did enjoy that one win in Brazil), you could expect it to think that it has had quite enough of doing the learning bit right now.

But while other teams in the same scenario have often found themselves unable to avert a change of direction and rapidly detour off into a negative spiral, things could not have been more different at the Brackley and Brixworth factories.

In fact, rather than a blame culture emerging where factions turn on each other, the challenges of the past two years have delivered, if anything, a stronger Mercedes workforce that has been unified rather than splintered by all that has gone on.

As Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff explained to Autosport at the end of last year, back-to-back difficult campaigns have not been a case of requiring a rescue operation from on high to try to keep the troops in order.

Instead, there is a clear sense that there was a desire from the whole team to pull together and sort things out.

“You need to ask the team how hard it was to manage me,” said Wolff, when asked about how difficult it was to deal with things. “And not only the other way around. We’re all in this together.

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG

“We knew that the day would come where it’s going to get more tricky.

“But it wasn’t as we expected, because the kind of scenario we had in mind was, ‘it’s tough to win a championship, we’re winning races, but we know where we are lacking performance’. And suddenly all of that wasn’t the case.

“Then you have false dawns and managing your expectations. It’s very tricky to keep the positiveness in our daily interpersonal dynamic.

PLUS: Is Mercedes experiencing an extended blip or the end of an F1 dynasty?

“It was not always straightforward, but I think this is where the strength of the team is.

“We know each other so well that we can kind of live with each other’s strengths and weaknesses. Each of us, in a way, carried the baton at a certain stage.

“When it was difficult in the debriefing room because the results were not as expected, it was then George [Russell] that should have all reasons to be upset, but he was about positiveness.

“Or it was Brackley or Brixworth. Hywel [Thomas] and his [powertrain] team were extremely important because they just delivered, they delivered, and they delivered. There was never any finger pointing to Brackley. There was always support.

“And I think that strength in the team is going to continue to give us a robust base of no blame culture.”

Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images

George Russell, Mercedes F1 W14, Lewis…