Mercedes conceding defeat so early left F1 pundit perplexed

Simon Lazenby feels it is a little unnatural for Mercedes to concede defeat of their car so early into the season after Toto Wolff talked about a new design that will soon be introduced.

After how Mercedes performed in Bahrain, it was quite obvious that the W14 hasn't been up to the expectations of the team and the fans. While it was hard for them to compete for victory, they were also defeated by an Aston Martin (a team that uses their engine).

Sky Sports presenter Lazenby analyzed the situation and talked about how Toto Wolff felt after the race on a podcast:

"It’s quite frightening when you think it’s a customer car, isn’t it? It’s a customer team effectively beating the works team. I think that’s one of the things that got Toto so much on Sunday saying is was the worst day of his racing career and all that."

However, Lazenby was left a little perplexed after Wolff talked about changing the design concept of the car, perhaps the 'zero pod' that the team has been using since 2022. Lazenby expected that the team might give a few races consideration before making such a major change:

"But for them to just abandon the concept, we thought they might take until Imola before they abandon it. "But they threw it away after qualifying, it felt like he’s just was conceding defeat early, ‘I’ve had enough of this, we’ve got to move on’."

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Lazenby believes that Mercedes are in a 'transition' phase

Mercedes have been underperforming since the past season. After eight years of domination, their performance fell after major regulation changes in the past season, and they still haven't been able to pick up the momentum, it seems.

However, Lazenby believes that since the team has lost a lot of engineers to their competitors, they are in a possible 'transition phase.' He said:

"You’ve lost James Vowles, you’ve lost Andy Cowell, you’ve lost James Allison. And more than that they lost about 15 engineers to the Red Bull Powertrains project."

"I think they’re in a transition phase. Mercedes are definitely a team in transition."

While this is certainly to affect the team, Lewis Hamilton hasn't been too happy driving in a relatively less competitive car since the past season. Hamilton recently revealed that there were some suggestions that he made to the team since he believes that he understands the cars. However, the team didn't consider those changes.

These small issues are obstructing the chances of Mercedes getting into a winning position, which is now expected to be none sooner than 2024.