Mercedes reveal their hopes from much-anticipated Imola F1 upgrades as they continue to chase Red Bull
Mercedes have started 2023 on the backfoot, but major upgrades will arrive for the W14 in Imola, the next round of the F1 championship.
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George Russell in the 2023 Mercedes W14
When Mercedes brought the ‘zeropods’ concept to last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, many people were stunned. Some felt that this would catapult them to the front of the grid again. But as everyone would soon find out – this wasn’t the case. In fact, for most of the season, they had the third-best machinery, but their pristine reliability allowed them to take advantage of Red Bull and Ferrari’s missteps. Coming into 2023, expectations were high for a three-way title fight, but now, that looks unlikely.
After this year’s season opener, Toto Wolff conceded that the ‘zeropods’ concept had been a failure, and wouldn’t bring Mercedes back to the top. So, since then, they’ve pursued an alternative concept. Major upgrades towards this front are expected to arrive in the next race, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix. As such, there is significant hype around the Silver Arrows for the next event. But it’s hard to predict the effect of these upgrades.
In any case, these are not expected to help them catch Red Bull, but it will be a more solid base. From there, they can develop further and hope that the W14 could eventually be competitive enough to win races. When asked what fans should expect from the upgrades, Mercedes‘ trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin said: “If we go all the way back to the test and race in Bahrain, that was where we realised that we didn’t have a package that was going to allow us to fight for a World Championship.”
He continued: “If we continued on that same development direction, we wouldn’t end up in a position where we felt we could challenge Red Bull. It was around that time that we took some decisions on how we develop the car, how the car works aerodynamically, and how we shape the characteristics of the car. So, how it is in terms of handling [etc.] What we are going to be bringing to the track in Imola is the first step of that work.”
Mercedes ‘hope’ Imola upgrades will improve race & qualifying pace
Of course, these upgrades take a significant amount of resources, and time. Then there’s the budget cap to consider as well. All this means that Mercedes’ ‘new’ direction, and season, start from Imola. Andrew Shovlin further explained: “The Imola package are the first steps in that direction. We are hoping to bring other updates later in the year.”
The ‘hope’ is that the pace of the W14 improves: “We do hope that it is quicker, we hope that it’s better in terms of qualifying and race pace. The key thing though is that we are not just looking to bring a lap time update, we are looking to head off in a different development direction. One that we think gives us a better chance in the long term of being able to challenge for race wins and World Championships.”
Their main rivals for P2 in the championship, Aston Martin and Ferrari, will also be bringing upgrades to Imola. So, it’ll be intriguing to see whether either team can turn it around and get a better handle on their rivals. Neither of them, though, are expected to touch Red Bull. But anything is possible – neutrals will certainly hope that these upgrade packages are enough for that.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)