Toto Wolff has not spared strong criticism of the W14 after the Bahrain GP. The Mercedes team principal rejected the black arrow, calling Sakhir’s weekend one of the worst since the star has been racing! A real disaster, therefore, which will have repercussions on the Brackley structure.
Mercedes seems to have made a mistake in insisting on the “zero-pods” single-seater: the Austrian manager had words of praise for the Aston Martin AMR23 which are a strong accusation against the W14: “We can only take our hats off to to what they’ve done – Wolff admitted – they’ve gained two seconds in six months and their car is half ours, considering that they use the same gearbox, engine and rear suspension, plus we also share the same wind tunnel. So we just have to recognize that they did a better job than us.”
Toto Wolff, Team Principal and CEO of Mercedes-AMG, speaks Andrew Showlin, chief of race engineers
Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images
Wolff does not place the accent on the Mercedes mechanics, but on the aerodynamic look of the W14…
“We know we don’t have a mechanical problem, otherwise Aston Martin would also suffer, the point is that we go well on the straight but we lose a lot of time in the fast corners”.
Instead of getting closer to Red Bull and Mercedes, Mercedes was overtaken by Aston Martin, relegating to fourth force in the world championship, in a fall that seems inexorable. The technical staff headed by Mike Elliott is under pressure: the Englishman was more than supported by Toto, but now there is an evident fracture, due to the obtuseness of the choices in the W14 project.
It seems that James Allison has returned to the field: the CTO would have put his hand to the developments that will have to arrive at Imola and which are followed by Riccardo Musconi. But what are the aspects that sent the W14 into a crisis: there is a lack of downforce, while the maximum speed is not bad at all. Hamilton reached 324.4 km/h at the speed trap in qualifying, doing little better than poleman Verstappen and paying 2.2 km/h to Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari. The Englishman reached 333.4 km/h in the race, flying more than the Red Bulls themselves, a sign that that’s not where the problem lies.
Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes F1 W14, George Russell, Mercedes F1 W14
Photo by: Steve Etherington / Motorsport Images
Wolff has ruled out that the problems derive from the rear end (shared with Aston Martin), suggesting that we need to look at the front: the Black Arrow still has the driver sitting in the cockpit ahead of his opponents. This choice determines an unusual distribution of weights and makes a background different from the others.
Not only that, but also the sides with the very narrow and high radiator vents, with an almost triangular shape of the bellies, evidently not convincing. The turbulence of the front wheel reattaches itself to the car body, despite the presence of a showy bargeboard, and dirty the flows which, instead, should help to generate the “pneumatic skirt” necessary to close the bottom with the asphalt, generating in the Venturi channels the ground effect.
The middle wing that covers the upper anti-intrusion cone and supports the door mirrors is profoundly different from last year’s W13: it now looks like an offshoot of the belly and the separation is minimal, although the radiator vents have been retracted , precisely to move them away from the front wheel, to mitigate the effects of turbulence.
Detail of the Mercedes W14: the central wing and the zero pod sides are under observation
Photo by: George Piola
The drawing of George Piola he shows us in detail this detail which is one of the points under observation and we wouldn’t be surprised if in the next GPs we see a very different Mercedes which, perhaps, will go in the direction that was taken by Aston Martin. But wasn’t it the Silverstone team that used to copy Brackley? Really weird things could happen…
Unless you pass the line of those who want to throw the W14 overboard to start the 2024 machine project from a blank sheet, without prejudices on the technical choices to be made.
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