Toto Wolff points out how Mercedes may have an advantage over F1 top dogs Red Bull in 2023

Red Bull were the dominant team in 2022, but Toto Wolff knows that Mercedes 'could have' an advantage over them in 2023 due to one particular reason.

Toto Wolff points out how Mercedes may have an advantage over F1 top dogs Red Bull in 2023

Toto Wolff

2022 was certainly not up to Mercedes’ lofty standards. They finished third and only won a single race the entire season – the Sao Paulo Grand Prix. But there was considerable progress on the performance front. They had started squarely third-best, far behind Red Bull and Ferrari. By the end of the season, they were definitely a lot closer. But not close enough, so they lost out to Ferrari in the P2 battle. This was almost uncharted territory for Toto Wolff’s team, who had dominated F1 between 2014 and 2021.

In 2023, the points counter may reset to 0, but the repercussions of being behind all of last season, at the start of new regulations no less, will continue to bear heavily on the Silver Arrows. They may have come close to Ferrari in 2022, but that’s partly because the Italian team somewhat dropped the ball. Apart from the numerous mistakes during the race weekends and the reliability issues, they also had to run the engine lower in the second half of the season.

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So, it’s impossible to know how much performance they had in hand. But that does not mean that overtaking Ferrari is out of sight for Mercedes. The harder task though is overtaking Red Bull. It’s rather unlikely that the Silver Arrows will start as the best team, but they should be in a better position than they were at the start of 2022. Plus, they have a been given a small boost in the form of Red Bull’s cost cap penalty – which means they’ve been docked 10% wind tunnel time.

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Wolff thinks this penalty ‘could be’ an advantage for Mercedes in 2023. Speaking to media including Crash.net at the launch of the W14, he said: “I think they [Red Bull] have done a very good job last year in having a car out there that was half a second or more quicker than anyone else. The lack of wind tunnel time is certainly not great for them, [and it could be] an advantage for us this season.”

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Toto Wolff knows Red Bull can compensate for the penalty through ‘efficiency’

Mercedes' team principal, Toto Wolff
Mercedes’ team principal, Toto Wolff

Red Bull’s docked wind tunnel time means they have to be more careful with their development, even more so than is usual in a budget cap situation. But it is not a sure-shot advantage. Yes, they’ll have less wind tunnel time than they would have usually, but at the same time, that can just drive more efficiency into the organization. Toto Wolff knows this.

The Mercedes’ team principal said: “But if you have an efficient machine, you can certainly compensate for that, or large parts of it. So, long-term, [it’s] good for us, but we’ve been in that situation – obviously without a penalty – so we won and had less wind tunnel time for everyone else for the last two seasons. It’s going to certainly bite them a bit, but if they are efficient as an organisation – which they’ve demonstrated – it’s not going to be big.” 

It’ll be interesting to see how the cost cap penalty affects Red Bull. It could just serve as a motivator for them – which could be bad news for Ferrari and Mercedes. There has been a lot of talk about a potential three-way title fight in 2023. This could be helped by Red Bull’s reduced wind tunnel time, which can cut down the gulf in performance that was present between them and the rest of the grid in the second half of 2022.

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