Mercedes surprised fans on Wednesday by meeting their demands and expectations by bringing back the Mercedes in the black era and by providing a better car to its drivers. The changed livery depicts how the car is totally changed from the 2022 W13 car that made Lewis Hamilton break his winning streak. However, there is still one thing that is not changed and proceeded the same as W13. The ‘zero-pod’ design. Despite receiving the worst outcome last year, they did not remove the side pod concept. Instead, Mercedes has brought an upgraded version of that in their new championship-winning car.
In the 2023 Formula One grid, Mercedes will be the only car with the side pod design. Being the one and the most royal team of Formula One, Mercedes did not copy Red Bull’s idea. They continued with their own ideas. The W13 was responsible for the downfall of Mercedes. But it turns out that the side pod design in the car was not at all responsible for any of their loss. It was a new concept that Mercedes developed for the first time in 2022. And thus, celebrating this achievement, they continued using the same concept in 2023.
During the launch of the 2023 Mercedes car, its principal Toto Wolff suggested that the side pods were not involved in the car’s performance. He said, “Throughout the entire 2022 season, team Mercedes analyzed it back and forth. We checked whether it [sidepod] concept was right or wrong.” Wolff is happy that the unique concept is discovered by Mercedes and no other team has it in their car. However, he explained, “this is not a performance-relative part.” Nad. Obviously, there is no such thing that we can call a holy cow. Thus the team is looking at everything they can.
Toto Wolff Is Proud Of Team Mercedes For Producing The Unique Sidepod Design
Wolff revealed that this is the first iteration of the side pods. And Mercedes s going through the initial races of the 2023 races with it. But things will get changed a little bit. This change in the concept defines that the gain is not huge. So the team can remove the side pods if required in the future.
Meanwhile, the Austrian boss remained satisfied with the fact that Mercedes is at least working on developing new things. “I think it is important to be bold in the motorsport,” said Wolff, who is proud of the solutions that were put on the car last year. About the zero-pod design that the team launched in 2022 for the first time, Wolff believes that it was something that was fundamentally the reason why the W13 did not perform as expected.
By losing 21 races, one by one, The Brackley-Based team learned a lesson. According to the CEO of the Mercedes-AMG-Petronas team, they already knew that an upgrade package would be brought for test number two. This will be worth one and a half seconds. In the first test of the W13, they thought that it was not really “relevant because the car is not going to be like this,” said Wolff. However, after the upgrade was launched, it was still not at all “performing as the team expected.”
