Mercedes may still be chasing answers about Formula 1’s current ground effect cars, but it has no interest in writing off next year to get ahead for 2026’s new rules era.

The German manufacturer has had a rollercoaster of a season; having started on the back foot it delivered a run of victories before the summer break but has since slipped back in recent races.

And with it still playing catch up against the ultra-consistent McLaren squad, the temptation to give up on closing that gap for next year in favour of making an early effort to get ahead for the new regulations that are coming for 2026 is obvious.

However, Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff says the squad has clear targets in delivering wins each and every season – so there is no question that it will push on as much as it can for 2025.

“This is the crux of the matter every year, and especially if you have such a big regulatory change, are you going to compromise one year or the other?” said Wolff, in an exclusive interview with Autosport.

“But I’d like to take it from Niki’s [Lauda] motto, when being asked. ‘Would you rather win this one or the next one?’ And he says, ‘Both.’

“Sometimes it is much less complex than one thinks. Probably the transition of people and capability into the 2026 regulations is going to happen a bit earlier than it would under stable regulations, but it’s not going to be game-changing.

Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, George Russell, Mercedes-AMG F1 Team, 1st position, guests and the Mercedes team celebrate victory after the race

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

“Nobody’s going to switch the machines off in January, unless you are really nowhere. But there is nothing to gain, because between P10 and P7 doesn’t make a difference for us anyway. We are fighting for victories and podiums, and cannot write it off.”

Current car confusion

Mercedes’ determination to continue throwing everything it can at the current rules comes despite it scratching its head at times over what makes things click.

Wolff explained that the fluctuating form of the top teams in F1 was very hard to understand.

“This variance in performance from race to race, or over a few races, is very difficult to compute, because what looks like an unchanged car can go from race winning to P6,” he said.

“The only team that is not a victim of that is McLaren, who I think have such a solid baseline and a less narrow window than all of us, that they’re able to keep the performance stable.

“All of the others bounce between exuberance and depression. Before the summer, everyone wrote off Ferrari. But they have come back very strong.

“Before the summer, it was Mercedes who was the leading team, and clearly not today anymore. So it is so intricate to identify those performance contributors that at times even that most clever people are lost.”

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing RB20, Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W15, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W15, Nico Hulkenberg, Haas VF-24, Oscar Piastri, McLaren MCL38, the remainder of the field at the start

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

Asked for his best guess about why car performance moves around so much, Wolff said: “We were before the summer [break] pretty clear where the performance came from. And today we are less because what everyone seems to find out is that more downforce doesn’t always translate into better lap time.

“Now, this is not the sensational news of the century, but it is the interaction between track, temperatures, tyres, balance, aerodynamics, and driver impulse, so many variables, that if you get all your ducks in one line, you are fast.

“And if there is just one factor that is out of line, you can look quickly very bad.”

Getting answers

The uncertainty about nailing the elements to extract consistent race-winning form means it is crucial Mercedes learns as much as it can over the remainder of this season so it is well-prepared for next year.

Wolff sees huge value in the fact that it knows the W15 has won races, so it is not an F1 flop.

“Every session now is, in a way, interesting, because we are able to benchmark against the good races,” he said.

“We can see what’s different on the car, what’s different on the track, what happened with the tyres and all of that. It’s not like we don’t know that this car has pace. It’s a race winner.”

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG

Photo by: Erik Junius

And while Mercedes has enjoyed a run of race victories this season that suggests it is starting to get the most of the current regulations, Wolff says the gap to the front is still too much.

“The objective that we have set ourselves every year is to win races,” he said. “We have won three – two were on merit.

“So you can say, from that standpoint, we are meeting certain expectations. But if you look at all of the season, we’re not.

“It’s extremely tight now, between four teams, which is eight cars. And unfortunately, due to non-performance, DNFs, the gap to the leading team is just too big. So we find ourselves in a position in the constructors championship which is not satisfying at all.”

Formula 1’s off-track political battles can often be as interesting as the action on track. The fight to get technical innovations approved on your car, and taken away from rivals, has long been the name of the game in getting to the front of the field.

One such battleground this year has been flexi-wings, with interest intense at both the front and the rear of various cars. The situation is a delicate one, because flexible bodywork operates in a grey area of the regulations.

Wings are passing the static load tests in the pits, but it is impossible to make parts that do not deflect to some extent when exposed to the huge aero loads out on the circuit.

At the very heart of the conflict therefore is how much movement the FIA considers to be fair game, and how much it views as blatant exploitation. These are lines that can move around – especially if competitors start lobbying with complaints.

The latest such debate has been about McLaren’s ‘mini-DRS’ on its rear wings. Although the design fully complied with the statutory load tests, politicking from rivals forced the FIA into discussions before it was agreed a change would be made.

While the flexing witnessed in Baku on the upper flap of McLaren’s rear wing was extremely obvious, it is not the only trick that has been seen in the pitlane this year. But as always, the probing of rivals depends on how much flexing is being done and whether it is viewed as taking liberties or not.

Red Bull Racing RB16B flecting rear wing

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

Ferrari SF21 rear wing FP1, Azerbaijan Grand Prix

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

McLaren’s rear wing was the main talking point in Azerbaijan, but it was clear that some of its rivals are rotating the rear wing assembly backwards to reduce drag, although some are doing it to a larger extent than others.

Given the FIA requested the teams to add target dots on the rear wings in 2021 (see above, right, yellow dots added to the Ferrari rear wing), to allow it to monitor footage from the rear-view camera and see how much flexion was occurring, this behaviour now must mean that it is deemed acceptable.

Nothing new

Controlling the amount of flexion being used by the teams as a means to increase downforce and reduce drag is not even close to being a new issue for F1. Each regulatory cycle ends up posing more questions, as teams attempt to apply their old knowledge to the latest regulations.

For example, we saw teams attempt slot gap manipulation on their rear wings in the early to mid-2000s, in order to reduce drag.

Slot gap separators were seen as a means to prohibit the practice. Meanwhile, constant adaptations have also been made to the static tests conducted on both the front and rear wings to limit the amount of flexion teams built into their designs down the years.

Whilst the flexion of the rear wing elements was more noticeable, there was also work being done by the teams to take advantage of flexion with the front wing too.

Its exploitation was fully unmasked as F1 entered a new regulatory era in 2009, as not only were the aerodynamic regulations much more restrictive, footage showing the front wing assembly was much more readily available, owing to the placement of the cameras.

Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari F60

Photo by: Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

The loss of the larger and more complex bargeboard structures also resulted in the front wing having to provide more support from a wake control point of view.

Its design and flexion were used as a means to push the wake outboard and reduce the turbulence that might otherwise be ingested beneath the floor and cause flow instability within the diffuser.

The governing body fought a protracted battle on this front throughout that period but, just as today, there’s only the static tests in place that the teams must comply with.

This helped provide scope for multiple development directions to emerge, as each team used the wing’s built-in flexibility to support its given aims.

During the aforementioned period in time, the teams were notably flexing their wings in different ways. Some used vertical flexion, so that the outboard section of the wing would bend down towards the track surface, whilst others had their wing assembly rotate rearwards.

The differing approaches obviously suited each of their end goals based around their design configurations both locally and downstream. It also made it much more difficult for the FIA to police, with them having to find different ways to prevent those various practices.

Similarly, it appears that the amount and type of flexion being utilised with this current generation of front wings doesn’t follow a common theme, with each team finding a way to flex the wing in a way which helps its overall goals.

Moreover, it seems there’s also independent flexion of the components occurring, making it altogether difficult to ascertain where the deformation is taking place and when.

FIA front wing target dot test mockup

Photo by: Giorgio Piola

In an effort to better understand, and perhaps help the governing body frame the regulations in the future, it has been monitoring front wing flexion more closely since the Belgian Grand Prix.

Teams must now place dots on the front wing elements and endplate, which can be used as a reference in the footage captured by new cameras that are mounted in the usual position on the side of the nose.

It has never really been a question of who is using flexi-wings to improve the car’s performance, as they all are to some extent.

However, the issue is more about making sure that the practice doesn’t result in a design that’s clearly working in a way which beats the static load tests but deforms excessively whilst on track.

This not only would lead to another arms race amongst the teams, as they all chase similar constructions, but can create an unsafe development environment, as the boundaries are pushed too quickly beyond the known limits of materials.