Having started the 2025 Formula 1 campaign looking to have all the potential to rival Red Bull as McLaren's main threat, Mercedes has experience a dramatic recent drop-off in form.
It has been perhaps clouded a bit by the false picture of its victory at the Canadian Grand Prix, at a venue that perfectly suited its car characteristics, but a deep look at the numbers highlights just how much its form has slipped away since the Spanish GP.
Based on data from The Race's supertimes model - which takes the fastest lap of each car on a given weekend compared to the benchmark and then turns it into a percentage deficit - last weekend's Belgian GP marked a step change in Mercedes' position.
As our graph shows, taking a cumulative running average of the supertimes over the season so far, at Spa Mercedes slipped behind Ferrari overall for the first time and is now the fourth-quickest team.
Its average pace is now 100.571%, compared to McLaren's 100.041%, Red Bull's 100.334%, and Ferrari's 100.548%.
What is most interesting - but is strangely something that has given Mercedes some encouragement about being able to turn things around - is that its tumble is so out of kilter with all its main rivals.
This is not a case of Mercedes' form having held up against pacesetter McLaren but it having been steadily outdeveloped by Ferrari or Red Bull.
Instead, there is a notable step change. Until Monaco in May - where its result was derailed by factors not related to car performance - Mercedes was nip-and-tuck with Red Bull.
But then other than the Montreal outlier, it has fallen off a cliff, drifting back towards Ferrari before finally in Belgium dropping behind the Maranello squad.
Mercedes' ranking progression in 2025
Australia: 3rd (100.599%)
China: 2nd (100.345%)
Japan: 3rd (100.358%)
Bahrain: 2nd (100.316%)
Saudi Arabia: 3rd (100.278%)
Miami: 3rd (100.245%)
Imola: 3rd (100.236%)
Monaco: 3rd (100.487%)
Spain: 3rd (100.475%)
Canada: 3rd (100.430%)
Austria: 3rd (100.512%)
Britain: 3rd (100.490%)
Belgium: 4th (100.572%)
A wrong path
Mercedes does not yet have an explanation for what has caused its pace to fall away in such a dramatic fashion, but suspicions are centred on upgrades that it has introduced having sent it down a development path that has made the car less comfortable to drive.
This is also perhaps linked to the flexi front wing clampdown that came into force at the Spanish GP.
Technical director James Allison said this week that Mercedes' analysis of its own data showed that there appears to be something specific it has done wrong.
Reflecting in Mercedes' regular post-race video debrief about its current situation, Allison said that were this to be a case of the team having been outdeveloped, then the performance traces would be different.
"It's a guessing game, complete guessing game, when you try to say what maybe other teams have done to improve themselves," he said.
"But when you have a situation where seemingly everybody's improved by the same amount, everybody, and you've just slipped backwards, more often than not when that happens, it's because you have made yourself worse by that amount.
"It isn't that everyone magically has put on the same size upgrade and crept up around you through that."
Mercedes' difficulties on-track include a car that suffers instability under braking in high speed and when cornering in high speed. It was not like this at the start of the season.
But there is a silver lining. And that is Mercedes' certainty in feeling that what has happened is a consequence of something it has done itself means it has the power to change it back.
Allison added: "The upside of it is that if you've done it yourself, which we have, it is comparatively easier to unpick that.
"You just have to retrace your steps a bit, understand which of the steps you took that were in the wrong direction, and then move forward from there.
"It hurts, but it hurts less than, let's say, if you launched a car with gremlins inside it, and you just had no idea what it was.
"If you've gone from a sort of relatively manageable beast to one that isn't, and you know you only did X, Y, and Z in between, then you have a path backwards."
Mercedes held meetings with its drivers at its Brackley factory earlier this week and it will almost certainly want to try some car spec changes in Hungary.
Allison said that they will "hopefully pick off the most likely candidates and get that sorted in Hungary".
"If we're fortunate, then to steady the ship a bit there and go into the summer break going, 'OK, that was no fun, but at least we can look forward to the second half of the year with that behind us' [would be good]," he said.
"And if not those things, then we'll go to the next candidate at the next race and so on."
The hope will be that if its fall from the front was dramatic, then its recovery can be just as swift.
