Mercedes Once Again Not Following Lewis Hamilton's Advice on W14 Development

The addition of wider sidepods on the W14 F1 car was not what Lewis Hamilton suggested to the team, explains that corrections take a long time

Despite the setbacks Mercedes faced in 2022 due to its ‘zero sidepods’ concept, the team continued the trend in 2023, only to witness the car's poor performance in the first race in Bahrain. 

The Formula 1 team then announced that it would be adopting an entirely different approach to the problem. However, in Monaco, observers were perplexed to see wider sidepods on the upgraded W14 F1 car. 

Lewis Hamilton has been quite open about the directions his team has been taking in the development of the car. Speaking about the changes, he stated that it wasn't his decision to add wider sidepods. 

While he didn't seem to be happy with the direction in which the car's development is heading, he does agree that it takes longer to implement corrections. 

He says: 

“We have had a lot of input as a team over the past year,”

Those constant conversations of ‘why does that look like that and we look like this, have we tried that?'

We now have the wider sidepods more in the direction of Red Bull, and it’s not been my decision to go that way.

“It’s been clear since we dropped the car back on the ground in the first test, it’s been the identical twin to last year’s car, except for the bouncing.

We have taken note of where we are and where we have gone wrong, so are slowly chipping away back to the front.

“It’s just a long process."