Win back. is the goal mercedes for this 2023. The German team has completed a bad start to the season, achieving only one podium in the first five races. In addition, it has been overtaken by a client team like It’s Aston Martin which didn’t sit well to Toto Wolff.
For this reason, the Brackley structure prepares a revolution in its car to try to get closer to Red Bull and fight for victories. The first big package of improvements will arrive in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, next world cup round.
The German team will debut in Imola a new flat bottom, It will modify the suspensions and introduce some new pontoons, the latter being the most striking change. Everything indicates that the star team will abandon the concept ‘zero pontoons’ that it introduced in 2022 and will opt for a more traditional solution, in the style of Red Bull or Aston Martin.
Andrew Sholvin, Mercedes technical director, has spoken about the team’s plans to return to contention for victories. The British engineer assures that, from the start of the season, they realized that They were not going in the right direction.
“It was at that time…”
“If we go back to the tests and the race in Bahrain, we realized that we did not have a car that would allow us to fight for the world championship. If we continued in the same direction of development, we wouldn’t end up in a position where we could challenge Red Bull,” said Sholvin in statements collected by ‘Motorsport.com’.
“It was at that time that we made some decisions about how we developed the car, how it works aerodynamically and how we shape the characteristics of the car”, explained Sholvin, who says that redirecting the course is a long-term task: “It takes a long time to develop in the wind tunnel and you can’t do these things overnight.”
Sholvin assures that, although in Emilia Romagna they will carry a large package of improvements, they will continue to update the W14 throughout the year: “The Imola package is the first steps in that direction. We hope to introduce other updates throughout the year, we hope it’s faster, we hope it improves in terms of qualifying and race pace.”
A “different” direction of development
Despite the failure of the unique Mercedes pontoons, its technical director assures that they will continue to bet on differentiating themselves from their rivals, since, if they are copied, they will always be one step behind. “However, the key is that we not only want to lower the lap time, but we want to move in a different development direction. We believe that in the long term we will have a better chance of fighting for race victory and for the world championship Andrew Shovlin said.
