Mercedes team principal Ross Brawn has said that the reason the team struggled in Melbourne was due to it being unable to get the W02 properly set up.
Mercedes showed encouraging pace at the final pre-season test in Barcelona after adding a major update to the car, which increased expectations of how competitive it could be in Australia. However, both cars were off the pace all weekend before accident damage caused them to retire during the race. Brawn said its confidence had been undone by an inability to get the car working properly.
"We took an approach over the winter which culminated in the final spec of car in Barcelona," Brawn was quoted by Autosport. "Barcelona is a track that we've never been super strong on, but the car was very good there. Michael was very happy with the car on the last day, we swapped around the drivers to give Nico an hour or two in the car and he thought it was quite a different car to what he had been experiencing up until then. So we came into this weekend with reasonable confidence that we could do a good job.
"But we had a very messy weekend. Cars these days have got a lot of interesting systems on and we had a job keeping everything running, which means that we haven't done the fundamental work of getting the car balanced and finding the right set-up. It has been a disappointing weekend and we should have been able to do better than we achieved. The problem we have got is that the drivers don't quite know what car they are going to have each time they enter a corner. The inconsistency is the thing that makes it difficult for them."
Brawn highlighted the numerous systems on the car as a specific problem that hampered its progress, and said that the key to its development was not going to be further upgrades but being able to get the most out of the current car.
"We have had difficulties with a number of systems on the car. There are a number of things that have got messy this weekend and the main difficulty is that drivers and engineers have not had a consistent enough car to work on. There are a series of upgrades planned, but what we have got to focus on is using what we've got already. The fundamentals are there and we've got to get everything to work well together over a weekend, and then we can show a much stronger performance."
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