A disappointing season
There Mercedes beat Ferrari in 2023 in the duel for second place in the Constructors' standings, but the Brackley team's championship remains absolutely disappointing. Mercedes didn't even get a stage win, losing the comparison with Ferrari in Singapore in the only weekend of 'break' by Red Bull and proved to be fast with Lewis Hamilton in Austin, Texas only to then suffer disqualification in end of the race after finishing in second place not far from Max Verstappen on a weekend in which the Sprint format may have limited the potential of the Verstappen-Red Bull duo 'forced' to freeze the set-up – like everyone else – after just one session of free trials.
The technical director James Allison, who returned to this role in place of the departed Mike Elliott, declared that at Brackley the various departments had become too fragmented in search of the solution to all the problems at a time when Mercedes had to face defeat starting from 2021 after a long dominance in F1.
George Russell declared that the 2024 Mercedes will not have the flaw of having been conceived 'hurriedly' unlike the 2023 W14: “Compared to the last winter break I have more confidence in view of 2024 – the words of the former Williams driver reported by the newspaper Autosport – because compared to 12 months ago there was much more time to decide which path to follow in terms of design with the new single-seater. Last year everything was a bit rushedwe made a couple of conclusions without fully analyzing the consequences.”
“In 2023 we focused on just one feature that did not yield the desired results – added Russell – we have to bridge a huge gap, the Red Bull RB19 I think was the most dominant car ever, but we had another season to accumulate experience in terms of what worked and what didn't work on our car. I don't think anyone expects us, McLaren, Aston Martin or Ferrari to be able to close the gap to Red Bull straight away, but I'm sure we won't fall into the same traps as this year“.
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