The 2023 season started on a difficult path for Mercedes. A 4th place for George Russell in Saudi Arabia has represented a disappointment beginning to the year, as they have lacked the race pace to fight with Red Bull and Aston Martin.
The improvement plans for the German team seem to be moving towards the Red Bull concept as they look to return to winning ways on a regular basis.
Toto Wolff, Mercedes Team Principal, explained:
“I think at this stage, we have no dogmatism of how the car should look like. It just needs to be the quickest possible race car.
“And if that car looks like a Red Bull, or like SpaceX, I don’t care, it just needs to be quick.
“And if it’s a Red Bull, we will put a little bull somewhere with a sticker, and I will have no shame if it’s quick.”
With the season coming to life after the first few races, Aston Martin seems to have taken the place of honour in the fight for the World Championship. A place Mercedes has grown comfortable with.
“Definitely what Aston Martin has done proves that, within six or seven months, you can gain so much lap time that it makes you play very much at the front. So that is good to see.
“It is good to see for all of us that you should never write off a season if these kinds of steps can be done.”
Speaking about the changes around the car, Wolff added:
“I think the biggest changes that we made is actually looking at where we want to have the car set up in its sweet spot.
“We’ve been too low last year, we’ve been too high this year. And now we believe we know what to land on.
“Obviously everything else follows in terms of floor, and bodywork that you want to achieve. So I don’t want to sound too foolishly optimistic, but at least we see low-hanging fruit with things that are encouraging.”
Photo: @MercedesAMGF1
