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Mercedes could be aiming for yet another major design change of their challenger in the 2024 season of Formula 1, as team principal Toto Wolff revealed earlier. He explained that the team is working on various aspects of the current W14, and trying to sort out the issues that the car has been facing.
One of the things that many teams faced, including Mercedes itself, was not knowing where exactly to work on their car. As Wolff revealed, they are able to collect accurate data about the same.
"The good thing is that we're constantly learning about what the car is doing. There is going to be some fundamental design changes for next year, but it's not that we're building stuff," Wolff said.
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The Brackley-based outfit entered the new F1 era with quite apparent issues in their challenger, the W13. The car was either hard to drive or uncompetitive. This saw them lose their lead from the top of the sport, and haven't reached there again. However, their performance in this season has improved a lot.
Even though they had a bad start, Wolff mentioned bringing in a new design concept in Bahrain earlier this year, which was seen at the Monaco Grand Prix. Mercedes gave up their 'zero pod' design concept, which was thought to be one of the reasons for its slow performance. The new upgrades on the car showed a promising result in both Spain and Canada recently.
Mercedes could be fighting for victories by the end of the 2023 season, according to the chief technical officer
Lewis Hamilton's performance at the Canadian Grand Prix recently has been the showcase of the development that Mercedes has made. However, they are still perhaps the second or third fastest car (owing to Aston Martin's surprisingly well performance this season with Fernando Alonso).
Hamilton finished third in the race, and it is very obvious that matching Red Bull's pace with Max Verstappen on a winning spree is very difficult for the teams. While Alonso and Aston Martin are hoping to win a few races this season, Mercedes are trying to develop with equal desperation.
The team's chief technical officer, Mike Elliot mentioned the development that the team is focusing on. Talking about where the W14 is currently weak (low-speed corners), he stated that with the current pace of development in the garage, they expect to start fighting for victories by the end of the season.
"Hopefully we can turn that into more upgrades, more performance over the races to come and hopefully start fighting for some victories by the end of the season," Elliot said.
