At the last two grands prix at Silverstone and Hungary, in particular, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg have been beaten away off the line despite locking out the front row of the grid.
At the British Grand Prix it was Williams pair Felipe Massa and Valtteri Bottas who breezed past the Mercedes duo, while at the Hungaroring Ferrari team-mates Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen did likewise.
Even in the preceding race in Austria, polesitter Hamilton was slow away, falling behind Rosberg who went to claim the win at the Spielberg circuit.
Following what happened in Hungary, Mercedes motorsport chief Toto Wolff described the situation as "unacceptable" and vowed to provide a thorough analysis.
Wolff told AUTOSPORT: "We've conducted that analysis and there is not one single factor you could name and say is the reason why our starts did not go so well.
"We've seen many various reasons, plus circumstances, why the starts went wrong, and there is no clear pattern. It's just the starts weren't great.
"In Hungary you could see the whole right side of the grid did not move forward at the start, whereas Vettel and Raikkonen, in P3 and P5, made great starts, so that was maybe circumstance.
"Another influence was the aborted start which made us overheat Lewis' clutch, and therefore his start performance.
"I could name you many other reasons why we didn't have the starts we expected, so we need to get on top of those problems."
Link: https://uk.sports.yahoo.com/news/esp-formula-1-many-reasons-poor-mercedes-starts-131032018--f1.html
Fascinating reading
Mercedes slow Starts
posted on 13/8/15
Although a big Lewis fan who wouldn't mind too much if he regularly disappeared off into the distance, I've quite enjoyed the poor Merc starts from the perspective of it mixing up the racing.
The thing is though, there's poor starts, like those the Mercs have been experiencing recently. There's good starts like Ferrari had in Hungary and Williams had at Silverstone. Then there's sublime starts like Hulkenburg had at Silverstone. I imagine Wolff has been going through that Force India start with a fine tooth comb!
posted on 13/8/15
It does make things more interesting when they fall behind
posted on 13/8/15
The relatively poor starts from Mercedes are one of their few weaknesses so because one of the cars usually qualifies in pole position a poor start from them certainly makes for a very interesting race as we have seen in the last two. The start at Silverstone was one of the most unexpected and therefore exciting starts I've seen in a few years what with the dominance of either Mercedes or Red Bull and I was genuinely on the edge of my seat.
I think it's good that the drivers are now going to have to be more in control of their getaways off the grid. For too long the cars seem to move away at the start in near synchronisation. It appears very artificial unlike the starts from years back when many positions would change even before the first corner due to driver skill/ error.
Man, I hate this Summer break. Can't they just go back to having a race every other week? No back to back races or three week gaps. At least there's football now.
posted on 14/8/15
Man, I hate this Summer break. Can't they just go back to having a race every other week? No back to back races or three week gaps. At least there's football now.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
There was a pretty interesting article in Autosport a few weeks back about this - guess it's obvious when you read it but the test teams of old that did all of the winter work have been done away with and so the race teams are still in the factory/ in Barcelona December - March. The summer break is pretty much the only downtime these guys get.