Mercedes mystified as Melbourne misery sees Lewis Hamilton hit career low

How do you solve a problem like Mercedes? Not easily, it would seem.

For the third straight season, they find themselves in the mire. Their star driver Lewis Hamilton had clearly seen enough over the winter to decide it was time to jump ship and head to Ferrari — and things have got only worse since.

Hamilton has ripped up all the record books throughout his career. In Australia, his failure to finish gave him the unwanted accolade of his worst start to a Formula One season in 18 attempts.

To date, he has just a seventh and ninth place, worse than when he supposedly had a pig of a car which was bouncing all over the place when the new regulations came into place for the 2022 season.

By their own admission, Mercedes got their design philosophy completely wrong, but stuck to it for nearly two full seasons.

Having performed a very public mea culpa, team principal Toto Wolff said they were effectively starting all over again. The zeropods were scrapped, a new floor brought in.

Their simulation data over the winter suggested they finally had a quick car, and winter testing in Bahrain finally seemed to suggest they could prove the best of the rest behind the Red Bulls.

How wrong that has proven to be. They are only the fourth-fastest team on the grid and Hamilton lies a lowly 10th in the drivers’ championship, while team-mate George Russell ended Sunday’s race flipped over following a dramatic 170mph crash on the final lap.

The head scratching, though, continues unabated at Mercedes. There is the genuine belief there is a quick car in there waiting to come out, but their boffins are at a loss to make that a reality.

Melbourne was an interesting case in point. Hamilton was already struggling ninth quickest in first practice, so tweaks were made to his car. By the end of the next session, he had plummeted to 18th. The fact he retired from the race after just 17 of the 58 laps almost put him out of his misery.

Wolff - who will miss the Japanese Grand Prix in a fortnight’s time - was again honest enough to admit things have gone awry with the latest version of Mercedes’ car, and it remains unclear why that is the case.

“What we see in the tunnel doesn’t correlate to what we see on the track,” he said. “We have not swallowed a dumb pill since 2021. We don’t understand some of the behaviours of the car and, in the past, we would have.”

Wolff knows the buck ultimately stops with him, but he is adamant he is not about to walk away from Mercedes, not least because he owns a 33 per cent stake in the team.

He said: “I look at myself in the mirror every day about everything I do. I would be the first one to say [if I should quit]. If somebody has a better idea, tell me, because I am invested to turn this team around as quickly as possible.”

Melbourne was predicted to be another Max Verstappen procession, but he suffered his first race retirement for two years following a brake fire just five laps into the race.

Carlos Sainz won for Ferrari in what was his first race since emergency surgery to have his appendix removed.