Even the brilliant Adrian Newey might find it difficult to quickly resolve Mercedes' current difficulties in Formula 1, according to team boss Toto Wolff.
During the Miami GP weekend, following Newey's premature departure from Red Bull amid internal power conflicts, the acclaimed technical mastermind was seen in discussion with Aston Martin's team owner Lawrence Stroll. He is also reported to have met Ferrari's head, Frederic Vasseur, in London just before flying out to the US for this weekend's race.
Yet, there hasn't been a strong connection made between Newey and a potential switch to Mercedes - although there have been "light" talks with the Mercedes-linked lower team, Williams.
"I would never say that he isn't an option at Mercedes because Adrian Newey is an incredible engineer," Wolff stated to Sky Deutschland while in Miami.
"But even the greatest magician would have a hard time solving our problems at the moment."
Mercedes, which once dominated F1 from 2014-2021 under the previous rules regime, has badly struggled to adapt to the latest ground-effect regulations.
"There is a science to these tyres that we just don't understand at the moment," Wolff conceded. "We don't know how to get them into the best working window, but that cannot be an excuse because the others understand it better."
"We see that our opponents are making progress and we're finding it incredibly slow and unsatisfactory," he continued. "It's really frustrating and really annoying that we keep falling back into the same problem."
This weekend in Miami, Mercedes introduced significant car upgrades, yet drivers George Russell and the soon-to-be Ferrari driver Lewis Hamilton still face challenges.
"We see in the data why we are in this situation," Russell explained. "We now have to turn back development but unfortunately, that takes more time."
"Upgrades have to be designed, then tested in the wind tunnel and finally built - and then the season is already half over. That's why it's so difficult to get out of a hole faster than we are."
"But that's just the reality for us."
Previously, one of Mercedes' main issues was insufficient tyre heat during qualifying laps. Now, they face the opposite problem of tyre overheating.
"We overcompensated for some of our problems with the new car," Russell acknowledged. "It went from one extreme to the other."
"We worked so hard on the problems that we went too far in one direction. But this is where we are at the moment. We're a small step behind McLaren and Ferrari and a big step behind Red Bull."
"The stopwatch doesn't lie," he concluded in Miami. body check tags ::
