Team principal Toto Wolff glumly described the race in Brazil as Mercedes’ “w🔴orst weekend in 13 years”.

It was, oddly, t🥂he scene of their most recent victory - Ge꧟orge Russell won the grand prix a year ago, Mercedes’ sole win since the end of 2021.

Technical director Allison admits they were caught off guard by their uncompeti💃tive weeke🎃nd, telling : “Yes, of course we were. 

“I just wrote an email back to the factory sayi🐷ng that I feel knocked f♛or six by it.

“We came here, it would’ve been 🐲too much to expect a repeat of last year’s w💧in - the stars would’ve had to have aligned for that.

“But I felt like we’d be troubling the podium.

“You could say ‘yꦆou’ve been undon🌸e by your own hubris’.

“Never in my wildest dreams 💙did I imagine 🌜that we’d have the torrid weekend that we just had.

“In some ways, there’s a comfort in that because wℱe must’ve just got someth🌠ing wrong.

“We’ll go away and uncover what that was.

“We’ll come back and hopefully put it to bed.”

Lewis Hamilton finished ei💃ghth and Russell retired wh🌜ile in 11th.

Their cust𒐪omer teams 🍸- Aston Martin and McLaren - outperformed Mercedes again.

Allison e🍌xplained: “The main issues were hot rear tyres - which give you a snappier end, and the sort of tyre degradation that we saw.

“And also an annoying amount of understeer.

“When you’ve g💙ot a ൲balance that’s all at sea, like that, it’s very easy to nibble away with every bit of throttle, every turn of the wheel, a bit of the tyres.

“The tyres were tender for everyone here.

“A single-lap pac🔴e which was okay very 🐽quickly became mediocre when we gobbled up our tyres.

“That’s normally a strength of ours so it’s particularly upsetting to weather that stor🅰m.

“Every weekend, the job is to land t💃he car in a place where it can be as happy as can be.🎉 “Sprint weekends put pressure on that, because you get one go at that.

“We clearly haven’t landed it where it can do it’s beဣst work.

“That🎐’s not an excuse. It’s a sp🌟rint weekend for everyone. That one hour is what everyone has.

“We generally get that right, but not here.”

Allison has returned to💦 his role as technical director in the wake of Mike💛 Elliott’s exit.

Mercedes’ plans for their W15 2024 F1 car are underway in a bid to become competitive with Red Bull once aga🐈in, with Allison again at the helm of development.