Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director, has confirmed that the team’s 2024 F1 challenger will change “considerably” compared to the W14, which hasn’t matched the expectations for the 2023 season.
Photo Credits: Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team
Despite taking pole position for the Hungarian Grand Prix in the hands of Lewis Hamilton and challenging for the victory with both cars in Singapore, Mercedes’ W14 car has largely been a disappointment for a team that had won eight consecutive constructors’ titles between 2014-2021, failing to present any real threat to Red Bull and Max Verstappen’s dominant run this season.
That has left Lewis Hamilton frustrated with the lack of progress being made so far this season – his best qualifying effort last time out in Suzuka was over a second slower than Verstappen’s benchmark pole lap. The Briton is adamant that the team has to make changes “real quick” in order to be in a competitive position for next season, and even hinted that he’s personally going to visit the factory in order to “see if they are making those changes“:
“I know what the problem is; it’s just getting the guys to make the changes. I try to argue my point but it is not my job to design the car,” he said. “I am hopeful they do the job but it is going to take real changes real quick.
“An easy one second ahead of us for him [Verstappen]. I’ve had cars like that before and I know what it feels like and it’s pretty special when you drive a lap with a car with that sort of balance around here. So I am pushing and hoping for my team to build me that for next year.”
Speaking to selected media after qualifying in Japan, Mercedes’ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has confirmed that the team will “considerably” change its 2024 car compared to the W14, but admitted that so early on in the development cycle, there is no guarantee of having its problems fixed:
“We have set ourselves very ambitious targets. We are changing the car quite considerably for next year. Whether or not we can solve all the issues that we’ve got on the handling, that will depend on a number of projects delivering.
“Those projects are under way. They are not complete. But we have got some good directions to try to improve that. The car will be different. We have made a lot of changes to it, but it is very early in the development of a new car to say we’ve got it sorted.”
The 49-year-old engineer explained the team is aware of where the weaknesses of the W14 are most prominent – rear-end instability. He said the team will not hold back in making changes and will not be “clinging on” to old concepts when designing its 2024 machine:
“Lewis and George [Russell] together are always giving us feedback on where the weaknesses are, and while they might be identifying different causes we know fundamentally their car doesn’t have enough stability.
“We know they don’t have the confidence to throw it into a high-speed corner here and know that the rear’s not going to slide more than they want and be a bit of a challenge.
“So you can build a clear picture of where you need to develop and we are certainly not clinging on to any concepts we had before.
“We are very open-minded and we have had a very chastening couple of years, and we are a team working very hard to try to get back to the front.”
