Mercedes forced to confront dreaded foe's return after tough Imola GP

19:40, 18 May

byNorberto Mujica

A terrible balance sheet for Mercedes after the race in Imola, with Andrea Kimi Antonelli not finishing the race and Goerge Russell falling from P3 to P7. Bradley Lord, the German team's representative reveals they have to face the return of a dreaded foe that's marred their recent seasons.

Mercedes team representative, in its CEO Toto Wolff's absence, has clarified where the German team's season has starte to go awry.

"We have found ourselves front limited at some circuits so far this year, so the work this weekend has been on the rear axle and that's been our big limitation," Lord said to media including GPblog after the race in Imola.

"It's clear if anything it felt like the gap between our qualifying pace and our race pace was bigger this weekend in the race today rather than smaller which obviously was the aim of the work that we've been doing," added Lord regarding Mercedes missing the mark ahead of the race.

Mercedes, again, faces development path issues

Today's race also left Mercedes with the tough task of facing the fact that their dreaded and long-time foe since the introduction of the ground effect rules, losing the development direction, has indeed made an unexpected comeback.

"[There's] ots for us to dig through and understand better in order to see where we've made improvements with the car and where potentially we've taken the wrong path and may need to change our thinking and change what we're doing in order to have less of a delta between the single lap pace and then the long run pace."

"Certainly today there were plenty of cars who qualified behind us who were matching us, if not quicker than us, over those longer stints."