Hope for improvement
Mercedes F1 team boss Toto Wolff takes into account that his team has not closed the gap to defending champion Red Bull. Of course, Mercedes hopes to be able to compete for victory right at the front, but according to Wolff that is not a foregone conclusion.
The Mercedes-AMG Formula 1 team had a bitter pill to swallow last season: after years of having the fastest car, the champions suddenly had a car that could not compete for the win. At the end of the 2022 season there was a clear improvement and the team hopes to build on that in 2023. “If we perform as we hope, then we will be back in the front,” says Toto Wolff Motorsport.com.
It makes sense that he hopes so. Whether it’s real is another matter. The Austrian team boss is wary: “It may very well be that the gaps (to Red Bull and Ferrari, ed.) Are the same as last season. If you are half a second behind, it will be very difficult to get that right. make on great organizations like Red Bull and Ferrari.” Should it indeed be the case that there is still a gap to the top, Wolff hopes that at least the development of the Mercedes accelerates during the season. The Austrian explains that it is now clear how Mercedes can develop further on the basis of last year’s W13. “In testing we will see if the potential that we have always seen in the car is really there.”
In any case, Mercedes can spend more time in the wind tunnel than Ferrari and especially Red Bull, and the Germans hope to take advantage of that. That is a result of last year’s championship standings. The lower a team finishes, the more wind tunnel time becomes available. By definition, Red Bull already had the least time, but that was reduced even further due to exceeding the maximum budget in 2021.
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– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl