Mercedes has suffered much more than expected with the W13, especially with porpoising and handling problems, a car that has really only shone on circuits with a lot of downforce.
In the build-up to the Singapore Grand Prix, Russell explained that the team has already chosen a specific philosophy for the 2023 W14 , with clear objectives that they will try to meet.
“I’m sure the direction we’re going to take is the right one,” he said. “We have a specific philosophy for our development, and I am very sure it is the right one.”
“But anyway, that doesn’t mean we can reach our goal, but the fact that we have it is already very positive in itself. As I said, we have a clear goal that we are trying to achieve.”
“Now, can we do it? I’m very confident that we can. But obviously, we don’t know how much other teams are going to improve this winter.”
“But overall, I’m pretty confident that we’ll have a more complete car on the different types of circuit next year.”
George Russell explained that his confidence is based on the numbers that Mercedes is driving right now.
On the other hand, he also assured that the team really managed to understand the problems of the W13 after the races at Spa, Zandvoort and Monza.
“To be honest, it’s all about the data. We’ve looked a lot at the races where we’ve been competitive and also the ones where we’ve been slow, and trying to understand why in both cases.”
“And I think we’ve managed to understand that, to understand why at certain circuits we’ve been much more competitive than others. We’ve managed to learn that in these last few races.”
“The hat-trick after the summer break was quite a positive for us in that regard, with performance changes between the low-downforce and high-downforce circuits.
Asked by Motorsport.com to elaborate more on the philosophy than Mercedes now, he said: “I don’t want to go into too much detail, because it’s something we’ve worked hard to understand, and we’re confident it will give us an advantage. for next year”.
“So obviously I don’t want to say anything that could benefit our rivals .”
“But in the end, every car is different. I have to admit I’ve said a couple of times this season that we had understood our car, and we were on the right track, but we’ve taken a few steps back due to a couple of oddities that we didn’t understand. we expected”.
“But I think we’ve already been through so many different scenarios in so many races that I really can’t think of another setback that would catch us by surprise.”
“We’ve had problems with porpoising, we’ve had driving problems, we’ve seen the car touch the ground and damage the bottom.”
“We’ve had a lot of different problems, and now we believe and trust that we are in the direction that we need to go. Hopefully the performance will come with that,” concluded the young British Mercedes driver.
