With a season, the 2023 one, increasingly ready to be consigned to the archives - or rather, into the hands of Max - there are many teams that are already working on 2024, a year in which they hope to at least be able to fight for the title. This is the case of Mercedes which, after two seasons full of ups and downs with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, is ready for the radical – like Ferrari – car change which however does not seem to provide, at least for now, so much reassurance.
Mercedes and that light infuses the tunnel…
The W13 project before, and the W14 then, they certainly did not meet the expectations and predictions made in Brackley. Mercedes were never really in contention for the title, neither last year nor this year, with Verstappen truly dominating since the pre-season tests in Bahrain. Despite this, there was no lack of work by the German team's engineers: the new car – the so-called “B” version – presented in Monaco, gave some great satisfaction to both Hamilton and Russell, authors of five podiums in total (four for Hamilton and just one for Russell).
Russel on 2024: “Impossible to know if we will be strong”
With small margins for improvement, and an excellent second place in the constructors' category to defend until the end of the world championship, at Mercedes they know that they have a good basis to be able to have their say next year. Whoever pulls the handbrake a little more seems to be Russell who, when teased on the subject, preferred to lower expectations: “It's impossible to say whether we will have a winning car next year. Nobody, for example, had predicted the leap in quality made by Aston Martin during the winter, just as nobody had thought that McLaren, after their first five races, would then become the second or third force on some tracks. That's why I think it's important keep looking in the mirror and see where we can improve. Only if we manage to do this will we truly be able to say and think that we have made a leap forward".
