In a stunning revelation that will shake the very fabric of motorsport, Mercedes has declared its allegiance with time travel. However, before you get too excited, their version appears to exclusively enable half-second jumps back in time, and only while navigating a trio of devilish bends at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

Team principal Toto Wolff, known for his understated charm, commented, “today was not a good day for us” following a race where Lewis Hamilton played hide and seek with the points, coming in ninth, while George Russell managed a slightly more heroic sixth.

“It is clear we are at odds with the car in high-speed corners,” Wolff elucidated. “Aside from those mischief-makers, we’re as competitive as a hedgehog in a balloon factory. Sadly, in those three corners, we found ourselves in a time warp, dropping about half-a-second into the past. Made it a smidgen tricky for our drivers to do anything but admire the scenery.”

With a fortnight to regroup before the circus rolls into Australia, Wolff is optimistic. “These first two races have been rich with enlightenment,” he said. “We need to pop our thinking caps on, do a bit of the old analysis and improvement. It’s clear we’ve got a mountain to scale but it’s the rough days that put hairs on your chest.”

Meanwhile, the team’s trackside engineering director, Andrew Shovlin, has been playing detective on why their weekend was as enjoyable as a flat soda. “Turns out, our car fancies a bit of a bounce in those high-speed corners, which rather scuppered our qualifying and saw us eating the dust of Aston Martin and the McLarens in the race. We were so busy playing catch-up after sector one, the rest of the lap felt like an endless game of tag.”

He went on, “it’s been a weekend more frustrating than assembling flat-pack furniture with instructions in hieroglyphics. Granted, we’ve seen moments of brilliance, but finding the sweet spot for the set-up has been like pinning jelly to a wall. And yes, we’ve got a few gremlins to chase out with a broom.”

With the impending Australian Grand Prix, and Jeddah having shone a rather unflattering light on their performance, Shovlin admits, “We’re ramping up efforts to ensure Melbourne is less ‘Groundhog Day’ and more ‘The Great Escape.’ Given the tracks share a passing resemblance, we’d rather not have a sequel to this weekend’s horror show.”

So, as Mercedes vows to fix their time-travel device, or rather their car, the rest of us will eagerly wait to see if they manage to turn those backward jumps into leaps forward.