Toto Wolff expands on the updates being brought by Mercedes in the upcoming F1 races but knows they aren’t ‘silver bullet’.
For Mercedes, it has be a quiet start to the F1 2023 campaign. Team boss Wolff has played down any hopes of a fast solution to the maladies of the Brackley outfit which follows on from a similar year in 2022 where they struggled to win, but were consistent still.
The difference in 2023 is the change in ideology with a raft of updates channeling a change in thought process with James Allison back in the mix. The upgrades will be brought about in the upcoming string of races aimed at sorting out the inconsistencies of the W14 so far.
At the same time, Wolff has also noted that miracles will not happen overnight and a myriad or correlation work will need to be undertaken also. He is not expecting Mercedes to gain half a second with the upcoming updates as there is no silver bullet to success.
“We need to manage our own expectations because we are bringing an upgrade package that is going to consist of new suspension parts and bodywork and other things,” said Wolff to media. “I have never in my 15 years in Formula One have seen a silver bullet being introduced, where suddenly you unlock half a second of performance”.
“I very much doubt that it is going to happen here. What I’m like looking for is we take certain variables off the table where we believe we can introduce something that we don’t understand in the car and to go more to a stable platform. Then we should see where the baseline is and what we can do from there”.
“I think we know what we are going to put on the car and quickly we will see if it correlates with the virtual world and I think it’s good that we have three races in a row to understand what’s actually happening. And then it gives a little buffer later on to filter in our decisions in terms of what to do with our next updates”.
“Monaco is between the two and it’s a single lap issue and the tyre comes into life quickly, none of it would do good, so let’s see where we are in Monaco,” summed up Wolff, who dived more into some of the things that they are bringing changes to, which will help them towards the bigger picture and they will have spares in place too”.
“I think we are chasing downforce and we are trying to do the best possible job in terms of a mechanical platform and so what we are doing is introducing new bodywork, we are introducing a new floor with new front suspension and that’s a pretty large operation, like surgery,” said Wolff. “In the virtual world it is good lap time”.
“The upgrade that we are bringing is going to help us set the direction where to understand in the various areas where we believe could play a role while the car is so poisonous to drive or not. If you embark in a new development direction, it’s a long project to concentrate on so that should be fine. We never introduce a new upgrade if we are not having two sets plus one spare,” summed up Wolff.
One must remember they as a team had a sluggish beginning to the 2022 campaign and in the end nearly took runners up spot in both championships. They can’t win the championship in 2023, but they have kick-start with a solid baseline for the future.
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