George Russell has revealed that Mercedes will be holding a “big meeting” this week to try to remind their earlier season pace after a difficult few races.
The year began well for Mercedes and the Briton as he took top-five finishes from the first six races, claiming four podiums in that time.
The peak of their season came in Canada when Russell took the win with rookie sensation Kimi Antonelli getting his first podium in F1, but the following three races have seen a dramatic dip in form from the Silver Arrows.
Russell finished fifth on Sunday in an underwhelming performance for the team. The Briton finished over half a minute behind the winning McLaren of Oscar Piastri and 15 seconds behind the battle for the final step of the podium.
George Russell was not happy with his race in Belgium
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Russell has now revealed that Mercedes will be having a meeting to try to understand where the team has gone so wrong.
"We're going to have a big meeting this week with all the designers and engineers," he said.
"To sort of understand the decisions we've made in recent weeks or months. And why we've gone backwards. So hoping for some improvements in Hungary."
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"P5 was probably flattering the real pace of the car, so I'm at least happy we got the maximum possible.
"We made a clear change of direction a couple of months ago, and I think it's been since that point we've taken a step backwards.
"It sometimes takes a few races to understand what the real reasons are for that lack of pace, but clearly it seems that we need to revert back to what we had earlier in the season."
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George Russell has revealed there will be a big meeting in the team this week
|PA
The conditions in Belgium would have seemed to have suited the Mercedes car, but after a change in technical regulations, it seems the Silver Arrows have taken a step in the wrong direction.
“We tend to favour the cooler conditions. So we couldn't have really asked for better weather for us. But we've just had no pace recently. We need to sit down, all of us.”
Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' head of trackside engineering, admitted after the race that the new front wing rules may have hampered the car.
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He said: "What we had earlier in the year was a car that was working well at pretty much every circuit.
"We were generally fighting for the second row of the grid, if not the front row. It's probably true for anyone that the TD won't improve stability, but we did have this wing on the car in Montreal, and it was fine.
"The fact is that other people are able to balance their cars a bit better. There's no doubt a solution in there for us.
"We're just looking at all the steps that we've taken with the car design over the last number of races.”
Andrew Shovlin believes they have not done as good as other teams since the regulations change
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The team will not have much time to reverse its fortunes as the teams get ready to go racing again this weekend in Hungary. However, Shovlin is confident that the team’s performance will improve at the Hungaroring.
"It's definitely possible for us to look at changing aspects of the car for Budapest. How deep we go will depend on what parts we've got around us," he said.
"There's quite a lot that we've changed, so we've got a meeting with the drivers tomorrow to go through some of what we've done over the year to try to make sure that our efforts are focused on the right things and not just changing things for the sake of it."