Toto Wolff labels Mercedes' W14 as 'Diva 2.0' and more complicated to fix than 2017 car which first got that title; Wolff confirms Mercedes to switch focus to developing their 2024 car "pretty soon" and says they have to take encouragement from McLaren and Aston Martin jumps in performance
Wednesday 12 July 2023 17:39, UK
Toto Wolff has labelled Mercedes' car another "diva" and says the team have no choice but to switch focus to their 2024 challenger imminently.
Lewis Hamilton finished third in Sunday's British GP but was unable to overtake McLaren's Lando Norris for second as Max Verstappen claimed another victory to extend his championship lead.
Mercedes are second in the Constructors' Championship but a mammoth 208 points behind Red Bull, while Hamilton is fourth in the drivers' standings, 134 points off Verstappen.
With the Silver Arrows' hopes of reclaiming their world titles already over, Wolff is ready to focus on producing a title-contending car for 2024.
"I think pretty soon, we have no choice," the Mercedes boss said when asked when that switch would come.
"P2 or P3 fundamentally doesn't impact me and the team. It's about coming back and being able to win a world championship.
"That's not going to happen this year so we need to set our eyes to next year and then see at all the races to come, to learn, develop and make sure that we can carry that forward into next year.
"But, having said that, the regulations are the same so you're not learning nothing by continuing this car. It's a balance that we have to strike right."
Wolff had thought the British GP would deliver one of Mercedes' strongest showings of the year but Hamilton and George Russell qualified seventh and sixth respectively and while Hamilton finished on the podium, he received a huge helping hand by being able to make his only pit stop under the Safety Car and therefore stay ahead of those who had already stopped.
Wolff maintains Mercedes can still beat Red Bull and Max Verstappen on track this year, but that the W14's unpredictability and "diva" characteristics - a term which Wolff first used to describe the fluctuating performances of Mercedes' 2017 car - is hindering them.
"I thought that Silverstone based on our historic performances was the best shot (of a first win in 2023), but it wasn't," Wolff said.
"So maybe there's another track where we have the best shot because the characteristics of the car have changed.
"I always believe that we can beat Max. We have a good group of people, the best drivers and we just have to give them a car that is more predictable and not the Diva 2.0 and much more complicated than the first one."
As they seek to return to world championship contention, Wolff feels Mercedes need to be encouraged rather than frustrated by the big steps in performance Aston Martin and now McLaren have made in 2023.
Aston Martin have emerged as a front-running team this year while the upgrades McLaren have added to their car in Austria and Silverstone have lifted it from being arguably the slowest car at the start of the season to second on merit last the weekend.
Wolff said: "Why it's exciting to see the McLaren bounce back is that you can, within a season, come with upgrades that change completely the performance of the car. We're not speaking about two tenths up and down, we're speaking about a second.
"That's good for the sport that if you do the right thing, you put one and one together - and we've seen it with the Aston Martin from year to year and we've seen it with the McLaren now during the year. I like it.
"We've been fighting with our car for a year and a half trying to add performance, it came in but it's just chipping away those small gains rather than to do such a step.
"But I really see the positives. Fundamentally I don't care if we finish second or third, it's important to find our way back to fighting for victories and the world championship. While podiums are really happy for us to see that the car has potential, fundamentally all eyes are on the big prize and that's why it's exciting to see that McLaren was able to find a second in performance."
Aston Martin and McLaren's progress has come in conjunction with their cars visually looking more like the Red Bull, which remains unbeaten this season.
Mercedes abandoned their 'no-sidepod' concept with a big aero upgrade package at the Monaco GP and Wolff hinted the team is re-evaluating whether to use a Red Bull-inspired design in 2024.
"The sidepods and the bodywork are just one part of the chassis. Clearly it looks like very interesting solutions that it opens up but most of the performance comes through the floor and diffuser and we haven't seen how they interpreted the regulations and how they've done it.
"So in my opinion, it's just the package. We see that the strong cars all look a little bit the same when you look from the side and from top-down. And certainly that has played in our minds already back in the day. But maybe that's just a little more indication where it goes.
"We had the sidepod concept and the bodywork in the tunnel very early on already to see which avenues it would open up and how much it would add to performance. And the relative loss of the downforce, the way we measure it, was substantial.
"So it's not something that we wanted to follow up early in the year. We changed our design direction, I think we have a great group of aerodynamics led by (technical director) James (Allison) and I'm sure that it will be a consideration seeing the step they made."
Wolff has also confirmed Hamilton and Russell's seating position will be further back in the car on Mercedes' 2024 design.
"It's definitely something we want to take off the table as a possible discussion point," Wolff said.
"On the data we don't see big discrepancies to what the car should be doing, but these cars remain a surprise box so the driver's going to move backwards."
