Mercedes ruled the initial part of the hybrid engine era, winning every F1 Constructors’ Championship between 2014 and 2021. The ground effect era, however, wasn’t nearly as kind to the Silver Arrows. From 2022 to 2025, the Brackley-based outfit failed to bag another championship.
As the 2025 F1 Abu Dhabi GP marked the end of this disappointing period of regulations, team principal Toto Wolff admitted his team was happy to see it go.
Wolff says Mercedes “happy” with the end of ground effect era at F1 Abu Dhabi GP
Speaking after the season-ending F1 Abu Dhabi GP in a print media session, Wolff made some candid admissions on the team’s successes and failures. While he acknowledged the zero championship wins in the ground-effect era, he argued the period wasn’t a complete failure for them.
When quizzed on the struggles in Abu Dhabi, the Austrian revealed that things were not as hunky dory as they seemed from the outside. Wolff openly talked about the understeer and grip issues with the front tyres, arguing that his team still hadn’t cracked the code.
“Yeah, it shows that these cars are still not very clear to us because we come off the back of some really good weekends. Qatar wasn’t too bad and you could see a similar problem on the front. Today we just couldn’t turn the car in nine and in one because the front right was suffering so much,” said Wolff post-F1 Abu Dhabi GP.
“That’s why I personally think as a team collectively we’re happy that this ground effect era ends and we’re embarking on something new.”
When further probed on the team’s ‘failure,’ Wolff replied, “Yeah, you know we failed to win a world championship, but it was a P2, P3, P4, P2. That’s not like a complete failure. When you look at those stats set before in 20 years, it looks like solid and respectable. But obviously now and in the moment there’s nothing to be happy about because there’s always been a team that was far ahead in all of those four years.”
Mercedes F1 got it wrong right from the start: Wolff
Mercedes arrived at the 2022 pre-season runs with arguably the most radical design philosophy. The infamous ‘zero-pod’ design featured vertical slits for sidepod inlets, leaving experts dumbfounded. Clearly, it was their biggest innovative gamble since the Dual Axis Steering (DAS) system.
The move, however, did not pay off. Not just that, the engineers at Brackley seemed adamant to make it work by any means. It wasn’t until into the 2023 season that they conformed to a vertical sidepod design. However, the damage was done.
Wolff too believes Mercedes’ struggles started from there as well.
“So what was the reason? I think that we got off to a wrong start at the beginning, tried to solve problem by problem and whilst peeling off and sorting out those problems, new problems occurred and we were never able to correlate, understand. We had false dawns and lots of kind of theories, but never one that would give us an edge to fight for a world championships and then our competitors have just done a better job,” he admitted.
“I mean you look at McLaren, how they turned the car around three years ago and then you look at also Red Bull who had up and downs, but what has happened since the summer is clearly an understanding or at least an example of how you can find out of what’s not working in turning a campaign around massively and we have actually never been able to do that in four years.”
Wolff refuses to blame the budget cap for Mercedes’ F1 woes
While the understeer and front grip issues were more recent, Mercedes faced issues that plagued them for multiple seasons. The worst of them all was the infamous ‘porpoising’. Right from the first race weekend, the Silver Arrows drivers complained of violent bouncing under high speeds, leaving them with severe back pain issues.
It took almost two seasons for Mercedes engineers to find a solution to this issue with the right ride height. However, once they did, tyre degradation and graining issues surfaced. Had it not been for the budget cap, would Mercedes have suffered a similar fate?
Wolff opined, “You know, we were pretty conscious in when the budget cap came, not only for the commercial side of things, but also to have a more level playing field among the teams and not just the usual suspects that were outspending each other. So would we have been able to buy ourselves out? You know, look at the Red Bull or Ferrari, they have the same financial opportunities or possibilities that we have, so it would have again ended up in an arms race.
“And maybe it wouldn’t have been McLaren fighting there with us on top, so it would have come out to the same thing. This is just a meritocracy. Best man and best machine wins, and it wasn’t us.”
