F1 News: Mercedes Director Reveals End Goal For 2023 Season As They Shift Focus To 2024
The early stages of the 2023 season saw Mercedes struggle quite badly with its 'zeropod' concept which caused the team to drop behind customer team Aston Martin and Ferrari in the constructors' standings.
After the introduction of conventional sidepods along with a series of the other W14 updates, the car seems to have picked up pace, allowing the team to regain second position with a commendable 51-point lead.
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However, with the rest of the season still left to go, the team would have to keep its pace up to prevent the rivals from gaining again, especially after looking at the way Ferrari and McLaren bounced back in the last three Grand Pix.
Mercedes Technical Director James Allison explains how the team's one-step-at-a-time approach is helping them gain after an unexpected start to the season. He said:
“We started off with high hopes. Initially our position relative to the front of the field took some getting used to, but the subsequent reaction by the team has been admirable.
"Quite early, we got a handle on what had gone wrong and have steadily been putting it right since.
"At the start of the year we were fourth quickest, looking at our customers who were beating us, and that was frustrating. Ferrari were beating us too.
"Little by little we are gradually putting them behind us. Everything is playing a part in it. From strategy to engineering, reliability, manufacturing and the drivers who are metronomic in their ability to turn half-opportunities into points.
"Although it falls short of our initial aims, securing P2 nevertheless really matters for all of us. Especially in the second half of the season when the tone will be shifting to the W15.”
Speaking of the 2024 W15 F1 car, Chief Technical Officer Mike Elliott adds that any progress Mercedes makes throughout the remainder of the 2023 season would contribute to developing the car for the next season. He said:
“It’s important to show progress from last year and end the year strongly. We want to take the momentum into the winter.
"Our aim is to win championships. Unfortunately, we are not in that position this year. But we want to be next year.
"We’ve got to get that balance right between getting all the learnings we can with our current car and trying to put most of our effort into next year’s car.
"We’re engineers and are interested in the technology. As Niki famously said, you learn more when you lose than when you are winning. I feel like it was a big learning journey through last year, and into this year.
"The hope is we’ve uncovered the learnings we need now, and we can keep developing in one direction.
"Sitting in my position, to look at things through a slightly wider lens, it’s nice to see the learnings. You then illuminate another bit of the path, and it gets clearer.”
Just recently, Mercedes revealed that it had found the game-changing sweet spot in terms of the W14's ride height which would help them overcome most shortcomings in the car's performance next year. But, whether the changes would actually translate into better on-track performance, or not is something that only time can reveal.
