Mercedes is reportedly planning to make some vital changes to the car since they are still unable to catch up with their rivals Red Bull. They introduced the first upgrades to W14 at the Monaco Grand Prix and many after that. The modifications sure increased the performance of the car. But it still is not enough to beat their rivals. Despite that, the Mercedes F1 team principal Toto Wolff believes they can beat Max Verstappen and Red Bull.
Any driver who is driving a car other than RB19 has not yet been able to beat the Bulls. Only Sergio Perez was able to Max Verstappen twice this year. But the Red Bull rivalry did not grow any more intense on track as Checo was not able to beat his teammate for the next six races. After winning the British Grand Prix, the Dutchman extended his winning streak to six race victories while Red Bull extended their winning streak to 11 going back to the last season. The Austrian team has undoubtedly established their dominance this season after 10 wins out of 10 races this year. However, along with them, team Mercedes also has other teams to worry about. Now, McLaren is getting ahead of them, after Ferrari and Aston Martin were already the main competitors of the German manufacturers.
McLaren’s Success Is A Wake-Up Call For Mercedes
This year, Mercedes has managed only five podiums so far. But the former champions are not looking at the current table toppers as their competition anymore. Ferrari and Aston Martin have been their biggest competitors until now. However, McLaren showed vast improvements in the back-to-back Grand Prix races. Lando Norris came fourth in the Austrian Grand Prix and narrowly missed out on a podium finish. But to the delight of the British fans, the Briton finished at P2 in Silverstone last weekend. To the utter surprise of McLaren fans, their other driver, Oscar Piastri, finished at P4 in the British Grand Prix. Therefore, the performance of the two McLaren drivers has increased the tension in the Mercedes camp.
Reportedly, the Brackley-based team is now thinking about copying the Red Bull side pods for the next year’s concept. After the race, principal Toto Wolff mentioned that the McLaren car looks a lot like RB19. even their driver Lewis Hamilton also, believes that “After seeing the performance of the McLaren car, which is an RB19 lookalike, our team got a wake-up call.” And as Mercedes’ boss explained what Hamilton tried to say that copying the Red Bull side pods and the RB19 design, in general, seems to be a good idea. With this, Mercedes can apparently start moving in that direction henceforth. Mercedes’ boss also asserted that seeing Aston Martin and McLaren get such great performance out of their car after copying Red Bull raises hope for sure. They even tried to copy the RB19 design too. Albeit, it did not work as well as expected.
Toto Wolff Says They Don’t Have A Choice But To Start Planning For 2024 Soon
Undoubtedly, Mercedes has a quality team of engineers under Andrew Shovlin and James Allison. And Toto Wolff, as the team principal, has complete faith in his team to turn things around. But how much change can the team expect with W14 is a question? As per Wolff, his team will now start looking up to the next season soon as “we have no other choice.” The Silver Arrows clearly wants to plan for the championship in 2024 since it is not looking to happen this year. And Mercedes would not like to start the next season the way they started in 2023.
