Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says that a dramatic set-up change on Lewis Hamilton’s car “massꦇively backfired” during second practice at the Australian Grand Prix.

Hamilton was only 18th fastest in FP2 and struggled for pace on both qualifying and race simulations. The seven-time world champion also suffered damage to his W15 and complained over the radi🌼o that “so🔯mething’s wrong”.

In contrast, teammate 168澳洲5最新开奖结果:George Russell finished sixth and was also the quicker Mercedes driver in opening p🌄ractice in Melbourne.

Mercedes team principal W🙈olff confirmed after FP2 that his side had been conducting set-up “experiments” in a bid to unlock more performance.

“We’ve achieved experiments but we haven’t unlocked🐲 performance,” Wolff told Sky.

“I think in the second session we’ve gone through ꩲreally quite a dramatic set-up change on Lewis and that has massively b🏅ackfired.

“But this is why w꧅e are having those sessions. On the other side it was a bit better but we are lacking p𒊎erformance on a single lap. If he finishes that lap it would have been a bit better.

“But overall it wasn’t a good day.”

Wolff admitted he 🦩is frustrated that Mercedes have started the season on the back foot for the third consecutive year since new𝓡 regulations were introduced in 2022.

“If I would say that I’m not frustrated it would be not the truth, cไertainly we are,” he added.

“We are trying so much in all directions but we don’t seem to have found that silver bullet yet which help𝔉s to get us in the right direction. But we’ve got to keep trying. We’ve seen performance in this car before.

“I don’t want to go back and say we’re just not good in these re🍬ౠgulations because we have everything we need in order to get on top of that and we will.”