Lewis Hamilton said after Friday practice at the Canadian GP, where he tried an experimental floor and then an extreme setup that didn’t work, that nothing Mercedes was doing was making the W13 better.
And he suggested that the team would be better off focusing on ensuring the 2023 W14 is much more competitive than its current car.
“It’s like the car gets worse, like it gets weaker and weaker the more modifications we make to it,” he said.
“We will continue to work on that and it is what it is, [as] I think this is the car for the whole year. We just have to stick with it and work hard to build a better car for next year.”
But while Hamilton would want to ensure his 2023 car is a real step forward, Toto Wolff believes his engineers and designers still need more time and more answers about this year’s machine to understand what needs to change next year.
“I think you can only start working on W14 when you’ve really understood what you need to change from W13,” he said.
“The car is not in a good position, to say the least. I think we just need to look at and analyze the remaining races, session by session and test by test. And unfortunately, maybe we don’t have enough days to figure it out.”
“We lack pace regardless of having a bouncy car. And realistically we’re not going to win the championship. So maybe consolidating into third place is what we need to do at this stage and see what we learn.”
Wolff said Mercedes ‘ position in the championship, stuck in no man’s land as the third-best car on the grid, gave them the opportunity to be more open about taking risks with strategy at the weekends.
That’s why he fully backed George Russell’s decision to go for dry tires in Q3 in Canada, even though it ultimately cost him grid positions.
“We’re not in contention for the title and I think if we had given Lewis a better strategy with a cool down lap, we would have been further ahead,” added Wolff. “I think George probably would have been in a similar position.”
“But this is the moment where you can take risks and I’m willing to take risks and make bold decisions. This is what we did and it could have been a heroic moment. It wasn’t, but I think you have to try when you’re where we are. us,” he concluded.
