Nico Rosberg, who won the 2016 Formula 1 World Championship with Mercedes - like most - cannot believe how the mightiest team of the past decade are struggling as they did in qualifying for the Sprint Race at the 2022 Emilia Romagna Grand Prix on Saturday.
Commentating at the fourth Round in Imola, Rosberg watched in disbelief as Lewis Hamilton and George Russell struggled in the hopeless Mercedes W13. The pair qualified 13th and 11th respectively, both failing to make it beyond Q2 on a forgettable day for the Silver Arrows.
Calling qualifying Rosberg exclaimed at one point in Q1: "My goodness it is unbelievable to see how Mercedes is struggling out there. You can see the jumping with George Russell, it just gives you back and headaches just watching it, it is unbelievable."
The German referencing the visible bouncing of the Mercedes drivers as the proposing of their car makes it almost undrivable at top speeds.
Rosberg continued: "Then you get to the end of the straight and you have to slam the brakes and you have no confidence to attack the car when it is bouncing like that. They are really fighting with that car and they cannot seem to understand what to do to sort it out aerodynamically.
"It is incredible to see them back there and let's see if they can slightly improve for Q2 but I don't think so. I think they will go out in Q2."
Rosberg was spot on, neither made it through. And alarmingly Hamilton was 2.3 seconds shy of Max Verstappen's Q2 topping time in the Red Bull RB18; Russell almost two seconds slower than the Dutchman.
Hamilton: Each weekend is a rescue at the moment
The seven-time F1 World Champion summed up: "Not a great session and naturally it's disappointing. We came here with optimism, everyone is working so hard at the factory but things just didn't come together.
"I think we underperformed as a team. We'll work as hard as we can to move up in the Sprint Race. It's going to be a difficult race but who knows? Maybe we can move our way forwards. Each weekend is a rescue at the moment," added Hamilton, who will line up 13th on the grid tomorrow.
Barring any penalties for the top ten, in the other Mercedes, George Russell will line up in 11th on the grid, directly in front of this teammate.
The younger driver admitted: "We've struggled to get the temperature in the tyre in the first few races, we're always seemingly taking a bigger jump on the second lap.
"We saw that in Australia when we compare to the Alpines and the McLarens; they were a first lap qualifier, and we were on the third or fifth lap doing a fast consecutive sequence"
Russell: We've got the Sunday race as well and we can only go up
"It was a bit of a shame with how the red flags panned out today," lamented the 24-year-old. "But if there is a weekend to not be where we want to be, a sprint weekend is the one to do it. Not ideal, but we've got the chance to make up positions.
The Sprint Race will be interesting with these new cars as we can follow a bit closer, but I don't think there's enough laps with enough degradation for us to use our advantage there compared to our current rivals," concluded Russell.
Shovlin: A difficult couple of sessions today
Mercedes trackside boss Shovlin reported: "We have a car that doesn't generate tyre temperature sufficiently well and that has cost us. We were moving towards a schedule of long runs but with the red flags we couldn't get the laps that we needed and once the rain came, we were left in 11th and 13th with no chance to improve.
"This is not a great track for overtaking so we expect the rest of the weekend to be a challenge but we have shown that our race pace is better than our single lap and with both the sprint and the main race we have longer than normal to try and recover," reckoned Shovlin.
Notably, during FP1 in much wetter conditions at Imola the Mercs were as much as seven seconds off the pace, struggling to get heat into the wets and intermediates, a wet Sprint Race on Saturday or Grand Prix on Sunday could pile more misery on the F1 World Champion team.
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