Toto Wolff says Mercedes is ‘going back to the basics’ to challenge Red Bull in 2024 

Toto Wolff insists that he wouldn’t be in the sport if he weren’t confident in beating Red Bull before 2026.

Toto Wolff says Mercedes is ‘going back to the basics’ to challenge Red Bull in 2024 

Lewis Hamilton and Toto Wolff (Via IMAGO)

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen has won three world titles since Mercedes’ seven-time champion driver Lewis Hamilton has won a grand prix. The team has won just a race since 2022, with George Russell in Brazil. Mercedes is getting the car design wrong with the W13 in 2022 and W14 this season. Following the failure to challenge Red Bull In 2023, the team has returned to the drawing board to be competitive in 2024.

Mercedes is already working on the W15 for the next year and collecting data from this year’s W14 that could be essential for next year’s development. Both Russell and Hamilton have been critical about the car throughout this year. Team principal Toto Wolff and other senior team officials have previously confirmed that W14 doesn’t have the driver’s confidence. Hence, the development of the car is no longer a priority for them.

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The Mercedes f1 team boss, in a recent interview, admitted that the team is going back to the basics to get the W15 capable of fighting for the championship. He said, as reported by Motorsports.com, “For 2024, we’re going to change a lot, trying to get back to basics. We have to decide on what we understand, and what we don’t understand, we have to put aside.”

He added that the team is determined to make a car his drivers can’t complain about, saying, “I no longer want to hear Lewis saying – ‘I’m sitting too far forward with the cockpit’, suspension mechanisms that we don’t understand, and so on.” And he says the car building will be about ‘solid engineering’ and not ‘technical sophistication.’

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How bad was the W14 this year for the Silver Arrow racers?

Toto Wolff explained that the biggest problem the drivers George Russell and Lewis Hamilton faced was that they didn’t have the ‘confidence’ in W14. The car was unbalanced and felt hard to drive in, as said by Hamilton.

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Mercedes W14 (Credits: Racefans)

The racers also found it very difficult to drive efficiently at high-speed corners, and they were ‘not confident’ coming into high-speed turns. The car also seemed to produce insufficient downforce on the track, which sabotaged their races.

The team at Mercedes is optimistic and looking forward to developing such a car in 2024 that could propel them back to the forefront and potentially secure their 9th Constructor’s Championship victory. Wolff, however, remains confident in the development team at Mercedes to create such a car in 2024 that could challenge Red Bull.

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