The Mercedes boss was speaking to select media, including RacingNews365 on how the team will work to overcome its deficit to Red Bull – and why they will be caught once again.
The once glistening, proud Mercedes Formula 1 empire is looking a little bedraggled, bruised and dented after the second season of the ground effects era in 2023.
Pride took a hammering with the deeply-flawed 2022 W13 and its zero sidepods concept, but the team still managed to win in Sao Paulo and there was general optimism that this was just a blip that can happen through a rules change and that normal service would be resumed in 2023.
If by that, you meant F1’s newest man to beat Max Verstappen winning 19 of 22 races and his Red Bull team 21 of them, then yes, normal service was resumed, as Mercedes went winless for the first time since 2011.
Eight podiums was its smallest return since three in 2012, although one was a win for Nico Rosberg in China.
The zeropods idea has been firmly banished to the rubbish bin with the more conventional design introduced in Monaco giving the team a base on which to build the 2024 W15 that it hopes will wrest the titles back to Northamptonshire from Red Bull.
Team manager Toto Wolff reflects on what needs to be done and explains how Mercedes has found itself in a “vicious circle” as well as how Red Bull will be caught.
“The sport is doing extremely well commercially in terms of the season off-track,” Wolff tells a select group of media, including RacingNews365.
From the perspective of a Team Principal, the sporting side has been difficult because, although it wasn’t as much of a blind date as it was last year, we were unable to capitalize on our car’s poor performance in terms of race results.
“I think particularly in Austin, we could have had a win, but we made mistakes, we had an off weekend in Brazil, where we can absolutely reconstruct what happened, and it is not what would happen to a top team.
“We also had the quickest car in Singapore – but the results don’t show it, but it was a year of let’s say moving forward with the car and understanding for next year.
“The stopwatch is reliable, as we shall observe in Bahrain the following year.
We intend to modify every aspect of our vehicle, including the chassis, aerodynamics, characteristics, suspension, and other elements that are modifiable.
“Thus far, the outcomes in the virtual realm are encouraging; however, we must exercise caution in controlling our expectations. We must take this step in order to catch up and compete for a championship, but taking a drastic one obviously requires a lot of new information.”
Red Bull can be caught
As was the case with Mercedes during its heyday of 2014-2021, Red Bull found itself in a position of being able to turn off the development tabs quite early in the season, safe that the 2023 titles were wrapped up long before they actually were in Japan and Qatar.
When discussing Red Bull, Wolff pointed to this, and also the idea that as the ground effects rules mature, Red Bull will be left with an ever-diminishing development pool in which to swim – which is what, in part, allowed it to catch up and take the fight to the Brackley squad in 2021.
“I’m sure that Red Bull has probably switched off – there is no such thing as switching off [completely], but they will have started next year’s car way ahead of everybody else,” Wolff says.
“If we were in this situation, looking at our historic strategy, we would probably be all hands on deck by July on next year’s car.
“That is a month-and-a-half earlier than we did [for 2024], so when you calculate the gains that you make alone in aero, you are talking a couple of tenths.
“You get out of the blocks in a good way, you are leading, you are the benchmark, you understand the car you’re adding performance, like if you put an aero update on the car and it materialises like you’re expecting it to, and then you are in the lead by half-a-second.
“We’ve been there in 2019, 2020 and then you are in a cycle of positiveness where you’re gaining an advantage – and this is one of the headwinds that we’re having at the moment.
“You have the laws of diminishing returns, you’re development or performance curve flattens, that is clear.
“The more mature the regulations are, the more you can extract and maybe our development curve is steeper because we are behind, but that is industrial theory, and whether you can apply it to the world of sports, I’m not quite sure.
“[Red Bull’s] engineering team has just done a good job, they came out of the blocks, for whatever reason, much better than everybody else – and they have a driver who is on top of his game.”
“WE’VE BEEN THERE IN 2019, 2020 AND THEN YOU ARE IN A CYCLE OF POSITIVENESS WHERE YOU’RE GAINING AN ADVANTAGE”
– Toto Wolff
The Aston Martin and McLaren question
One significant alert for Mercedes in 2023 was the way that its client motor groups Aston Martin and McLaren both out-performed it and had the option to move forward while Mercedes itself remained adamantly fixed.
Aston Martin scooped eight platform, with McLaren procuring nine in addition to a Run success for Oscar Piastri in Qatar, with Hamilton and Russell just procuring eight platform between them, with Wolff sharp for the group to track down a more extensive working window for the W15.
“Aston Martin expressed that between the harvest time vehicle of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, [they found] more than two seconds,” made sense of Wolff.
“They were essentially last, and they were the second-fastest group toward the start of the time. McLaren expected an update of two-tenths and they got a second.
“The air works totally in an unexpected way, you have a ground impacts vehicle, which are efficiently more delicate, and in addition, you put a tire that you want to have precisely in the right window for it to perform.
“We’re talking a couple of degrees all over, and in the event that you have a vehicle that is unsurprising, that is steady, a decent strong stage, you’re battling less as far as sliding and debasement – it’s an endless loop.”