If at home Ferrari these are very complex days, based above all on the reflection of the SF-23 project, at Mercedes we are already at the next step. In fact, the W-14 did not convince and the reconstruction phase has already started in Brackley.
Change
"We will carry a new W-14" - with these passwords Toto Wolff, team principal of Mercedes, confirmed the rumors that had emerged in recent days. In Imola, the first European stage of the season, we will have a new version of the W-14. We are talking about a car that will follow the style of the one that is, after only two races, already destroying this championship, namely the RedBull. It is certainly not good news for the German team which, after pushing and strongly believing in their concept of “zero sidepods”, they are forced to backtrack. To accept defeat, but always with the aim of getting back up.
Mercedes, the W-14B was already planned
That engineers have been working on the W-14B for quite a while can certainly not be a mystery. Wolff admitted that at Mercedes they decided to change course after the first race in Bahrain, starting work on a new car model. The truth is that, even analyzing what the timing is, the Brackley team he already had the new prototype ready, not being sure that the "real" W-14 was much better than last year's car.
Elliott under pressure
Now at Mercedes, however, they know they can no longer make mistakes. Above all Mike Elliott. He is inevitably the man with the most pressure in Brackley. The technical director however he did not hide his faults and retraced his steps, confirming that he is working full force on the new car"After Bahrain – admitted the British engineer – we had to accept that we weren't where we wanted to be. For this reason, we have examined all the elements of our car and we have tried to understand what and how to modify it to obtain more performance because, to reach the first, there is a significant gap to fill”.
“Our main goal is to keep learning. We're only at the beginning, but we already have engineers working on aerodynamics, bottoms and bellies. Obviously we are also looking at the simulation side: we aim for the right things. We are pushing the aerodynamics in the right direction, we are examining the mechanical set-up of the car”.
“Are there things that escape us? What else can we do to the car to increase performance and we try to do it as fast as possible because we want to get back in front, we want to be competitive and the only way to do that is to accept that we are not in the position we would like to be and to fight and work hard to get back there”.
