Why Is The Mercedes W14 Black? Toto Wolff Explains Reasoning Behind Change Of Heart

The Silver Arrows are back in black. This is why.

Mercedes has successfully revealed the W14 in all of its glory, and fans are happy to see that the car has returned with the iconic black livery. During the presentation, Toto Wolff explained exactly why they have chosen the black, and it's not a shock if you've been keeping up with the car releases so far this year.

Watching the presentations from teams so far this year, you'll have seen that a lot of them utilise a lot of black on their livery designs. Look closely, and you'll see that it in fact isn't black, but instead exposed carbon fibre. While the black blends in nicely with a lot of these designs, the real reason behind it is weight saving.

Almost every team struggled with hitting the minimum weight for the 2022 season, so this year they're sacrificing a bit of colour to get as low as possible to that minimum weight target. 

Toto Wolff said:

"We came back and really tried to get the weight off the car. Therefore, from the paint side, we committed to gaining the grams from leaving the car matte carbon," Wolff said. 

He continued to add that on top of this, the term "Silver Arrows" came from when Mercedes stripped their cars of paint to leave behind the silver metal beneath - again, for weight saving. So what they're doing now stands in line with the team's strong history. 

We'll see just how much of a difference this has made when pre-season testing in Bahrain begins later this month.