Mercedes find themselves in a worse situation at the start of the 2023 Formula 1 season than a year ago, could it be that winning the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix might have misguided them?
The questions are obvious, who is accountable for persisting with a concept that made their drivers struggle so much last year? And carry it for another painful year? And, alarmingly deaf to Lewis Hamilton’s early warnings, it has now emerged.
Mercedes are definitely looking into a long dark tunnel ahead after the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix F1 season opener, and chances are that light at the end of the tunnel they would like to see is still far away.
What makes matters worse for the eight-time Constructors’ Champions is the fact that their new car for 2023, the W14 is supposedly the culmination of lessons learned the hard way from the awful W13 last season.
As things turned out, the W14 is definitely not another over-priced pogo stick from Brackley, but the sad fact remains that it is woefully off the pace, 0.6s in qualifying and 1s in the race, from what we saw in Bahrain, keeping in mind it was supposed to be the improved version of the W13. If that’s improvement…
It’s beyond me why Mercedes have soldiered on with their failed 2022 concept, but a team of their caliber should have a proper process of decision-making based on solid data and projections and not following someone’s whims, so is their data wrong. Are they having correlation issues? What is the crux of the problem?
The rot started with that single win in Brazil last season
It happens to the best of teams, but if we look back at 2022, Mercedes have worked hard to improve the car, and have succeeded to improve even at some point threatening Ferrari for runner-up in the Constructors’ Championship and even won the race in Sau Paulo towards the end of the season, but one fact remains that the W13 was unpredictable and inconsistent over the course of the season.
Could it be that this improvement last year, combined with George Russell’s victory at Interlagos might have sent Mercedes down the wrong path with the car, giving them false hope that the slim sidepods concept could eventually deliver the performance they so adamantly insisted was there?
This is merely a calculated guess, it would be strange for an organization like Mercedes to decide its way forward in such a manner. There was certainly someone [very powerful?] within the team whispering in Toto Wolff’s ear that the car concept will deliver, a person whose weight outweighs that of a seven-time F1 World Champion.
This brings me to what Lewis Hamilton recently said about the team ignoring his feedback on the direction of the car development.
What makes matters more interesting, worse for Mercedes, is that Hamilton is asking to identify who was responsible for the ongoing technical direction of the W14 and to be made accountable.
We have heard Lewis several times complaining about race strategies over the team radio during races, but that is normal. Asking for heads to roll though, is not…