The seven-time world champion says the new car still has some problems and downplays expectations.
Mercedes’ new challenger for the 2023 season, the W14, is their hope to compete for the World Championship after a tough start to the new ground-effect regulation. But, seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton says there is work ahead of them.
Hamilton says: “I knew from the moment I drove the car the challenge we’d be facing.”
The picture after pre-season testing says that Mercedes and Aston Martin are fighting for the third-best team post. It will be a disappointment for the Brackley team if it shows to be correct this weekend, due to the high expectations after the improvements throughout the past season.
But, both drivers are not reporting any porpoising issues. A major problem at the start of last season, which made the engineers shift focus from finding performance gains against rivals Red Bull and Ferrari.
“On a positive note, not having the bouncing this year is a huge, huge plus. Trying to understand what the problems were while having bouncing made it difficult to figure out what those were. We don’t have that now so now we can just focus on pure performance”
But, Hamilton thinks the team is capable to bounce back: “We’re not where we want to be to start the season, but this still is a multi-championship-winning team and group of people.”
George Russell has full confidence in his team to make the steps required as the season goes on.After a hard second day of testing, finishing running early with a hydraulic failure, being the team with the least laps and struggling with balance, Mercedes seemed to have corrected their issues and had a more promising third day, finding a much better window.
The Brit, starting his second season with the team, declared: “I trust in our team and if we develop at the same rate as we did last year, we’re definitely starting at a higher point. The way you saw our development last year with Mercedes was pretty spectacular, over the course of the year.“The good thing is, there are not too many races at the start of the season so it gives us some time to develop in the windtunnel and back at the factory, to fight for when the main block of races comes.
“I think we need to trust in our process. Mercedes have built a world championship-winning car for eight seasons in a row.
“We’ve still fundamentally got all the same guys there. And they haven’t just forgotten how to build a fast race car.
“We were obviously on the back foot following the challenges of the W13, but I absolutely believe as this season progresses we’re definitely going to close that gap, and there’s no reason why we can’t fight as the season hots up.”
