Toto Wolff confirms "fundamental design changes" to be made to 2024 Mercedes car; Team principal confident former world champions can overhaul car within F1's cost cap constraints; Chief technical officer Mike Elliott says team hope to be fighting for victories later in 2023 season
Friday 23 June 2023 19:53, UK
Toto Wolff has confirmed Mercedes will be making "fundamental" changes to their car for 2024 and is confident their plans will not be constrained by F1's cost cap.
The Silver Arrows are also hopeful their imminent upgrades to their 2023 car will put them in a position to challenge Red Bull for victories later in the season.
Since introducing a major upgrade to the W14 in Monaco, Lewis Hamilton has finished on the podium at the Spanish and Canadian GPs and George Russell was alongside his team-mate on the rostrum in Barcelona.
But having changed car concept mid-season, Mercedes have not yet optimised their design with Sky Sports F1's Martin Brundle describing the W14 as a "Frankenstein" car and Ted Kravitz explaining how the Brackley-based team have had to make a "compromise" given structures that were already on the original car.
F1's yearly cost cap of $135m (£105.6m) gives teams less flexibility on large developments, but Wolff says Mercedes have the margin to make the big changes they want for their 2024 W15 car.
"We have set up a huge organisation in our financial department of 46 people, that monitors the cost cap down to the last screw," Wolff said at the Canadian GP.
"We look at that trend of our spend during all of the year and what we've done is basically allocate resource to various projects.
"We've stayed below that line all year last year, and we're still below that line this year and that is considering a normal development switch for next year. This is still pretty much on track.
"The good thing is that we are constantly learning about what the car is doing. There are going to be some fundamental design changes for next year, but it's not that we're building stuff. It's more like what are we simulating? That is not measured in money, or teraflops or wind tunnel hours."
Wolff also confirmed in Montreal that Mercedes have a "larger" upgrade coming at the British GP, which takes place from July 7-9, and a further update to come before F1's August summer shutdown.
Chief technical officer Mike Elliott says the Monaco upgrade has delivered the performance gains Mercedes expected and having performed better than predicted in Canada, the Silver Arrows are hoping for strong returns in the next two races in Austria and Silverstone.
"We brought an upgrade a couple of races ago. We've now had a chance to see what that performs like at different circuits," Elliott said in Mercedes' Canadian GP debrief video.
"First of all, we are really pleased to say that it has done what we expected. It's helped the car move forward and we are generally more competitive.
"We said before the weekend that Canada will be a more difficult circuit for us; it's mainly low speed corners and straights, something that hasn't been brilliant for us in the past.
"So, to come out of this weekend to qualify with the cars fourth and fifth, promoted to third and fourth and then to race in a strong way, beaten by Alonso but for Lewis to race to third and in George's case to show strong performance up until his crash, I think it is a good result for us and hopefully something we can take into the next few races.
"I think where we have seen the car struggling is more in the low-speed corners and so we start looking at circuits that have got more medium and high-speed content; we think we will do better there.
"So, Silverstone will be a good example of that. Austria shouldn't be too bad for us either. So let's hope we go well on both of those."
The Silver Arrows, F1's dominant team from 2014-2021, have won just one race since F1's technical overhaul in 2022 - Russell's Sao Paulo GP win last November.
But the W14's improved performance since its Monaco update has the team hopeful of fighting Red Bull for wins later in the year.
"It is really nice to be now racing at least for podiums, being able to show what we are capable of doing," Elliott said.
"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."
Red Bull seek to continue their winning run in 2023 as they return to their home track for the Austrian GP - watch live on Sky Sports F1 from June 30-July 2. Get Sky Sports
