It was a disappointing qualifying session in Jeddah for Mercedes with both drivers missing out on the top five. George Russell out-qualified his teammate in P6, while Lewis Hamilton was knocked out in Q1 and finished P16.

The last time Hamilton was eliminated in Q1 was in 2017 and the last time the seven-time World Champion was out in Q1 based on pure pace without any outside factors such as wet weather or penalties was in 2009. The Brackley-based team has been struggling to qualify above fifth place for both of the first two races so far and team principal at Mercedes, Toto Wolff believes that there are many parts of the W13 that they don’t understand. 

After qualifying for the Saudi Arabian GP, Wolff spoke to selected media including MotorLat about the challenges both drivers and the team faced during the session.  

There was a significant gap of over one second between the two teammates.  Russell set his best time at 1:29.104 and Hamilton’s fastest lap was 1:30.343. Wolff addressed the time deficit between the two drivers and revealed that it came down to “no rear-end in the car” for both of them. When the Austrian was directly asked about whether or not the team used different setups for each driver during the qualifying session, Wolff disclosed that they had experimented more on Russell’s car with a bolder approach.  

“Experimenting with setups to find out where the sweet spot of the car is, and so on, Lewis aside, they went a bit bolder. And the outcome was that basically, they had no rear end in the car. And that may mean, in that explains those that big lead time deficit,” Wolff said. 

Wolff also discussed how tricky the car was to set up and revealed some of the changes that the team made to the rear wing.  

“You can see between Lewis and George performance, that was not huge performance and huge setup of changes that happen. But they were big enough to have dramatic consequences on the performance of the car between going out in q1 and making it into q3 …” he said.

“So that's why this car is so tricky to set up. And we took, we had a lower drag rear wing, we took the gurney off, but still it wasn't enough to shave more drag off the car.”

Overall, Wolff divulged that the rear wing issue was only a symptom of the lack of performance on the car and that there are many other aspects on the W13 that need clarity.    

“But generally, I would say this is this isn't the single problem that we have many parts of the car that don't work that we don't understand. They don't perform enough. And this is not where we all expect the car to be.” 

While Mercedes has dominated F1 for the last eight years with developing strong and successful cars on track, Wolff feels that the results early on this season have bought him back to 2013 when the team was on par with Red Bull and not with Ferrari and relentlessly fighting for wins. 

Speaking directly to MotorLat, Wolff voiced his opinion on the strong on-track competition with the other F1 teams under the new regulations.    

“I love competition, and I always love competition. And we had a really strong run of eight years where we were leading the pack. Not always but we kind of manage our way into the league. And for me feels a little bit like 2013, where we just were and up to the speed with the Red Bull and probably also not with the Ferraris but we kept fighting and this is how I feel at the moment.”

“We need to find it, certainly totally unacceptable where we are on performance, with third on the road. Sometimes not even like today. So you know, there's just it's just not an option to stay where we are.”