A failed concept
The dark days of Mercedes, after years of undisputed dominance on the Formula 1 grid, seem destined to last for some time yet. The victory that arrived at Interlagos at the end of last season, after the hard work done by the men and women of Brackley on the W13, had deluded the Anglo-German team that the new W14 could at least partially bridge the gap that separated the arrows from silver from Red Bull. Unfortunately for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell this was not the case, indeed Mercedes was also overtaken by Aston Martin. Precisely the results of the AMR23, which takes the power unit, gearbox and practically the entire rear end from Mercedes, seem to have given the decisive push to the Mercedes engineers to finally abdicating the ‘zero sidepods’ conceptonly used by the house from Stuttgart in the current grille.
W14 to overturn
The team principal Toto Wolffwhich has already stated several times as the W14 is destined to undergo profound identity changes in the next GPs just to try to finally bring the performance of its direct rivals closer, he also recently mentioned the late Niki Lauda, his friend and former president of Mercedes, to underline the urgency of a revolution in the house of the star. Remembering the triple world champion, a very important part of the Mercedes team that dominated F1 at the beginning of the hybrid era, Wolff reiterated the need to make simple and linear decisionshow would it be to give up such a particular and – so far – unprofitable concept to go back and ‘copy’ the car model made by rival teams.
Lauda’s teaching
“I miss Lauda a lot, especially as a friend – Wolff told the microphones of Sky Sports F1 – we all miss him as president. For Nicki [la situazione] it would have been very simple, because simplicity is what leads you to make the best decision and I know exactly what he would have said. ‘Our car is very different, let’s make it like the others and optimize it. We have a great team, great technology and infrastructure, we can do it much better than the others, so why don’t we get to work?’ Things are always very simple Wolff concluded. one can always strip away all the nonsense to arrive at simple evaluations. These are very often instinctive decisions added to data to support them. This is the way Niki has always operated. Don’t overcomplicate things, but do the basics right“.
#concept #Mercedes #W14 #Wolff #quotes #Lauda #FormulaPassion