The Silver Arrows are back in black for 2023.
Mercedes pulled the covers off its 2023 challenger, the W14, in a slick but understated online launch this week to reveal it was returning to the darker hues of its 2020–21 cars.
But the decision was about more than just style. As is increasingly the trend in Formula 1, much of the car is unpainted carbon fibre in a desperate measure to reach the minimum weight. The opportunity for a livery redux was just a bonus.
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And squeezing the most out of what it’s got is the name of the game for Mercedes this year, for while the colour might be significantly different, the car’s geometry still shares the fundamental DNA of last year’s problemed machine
Despite slipping from the constructors championship in 2021 to a distant third last year with just a solitary win, Mercedes is doubling down on the concept it debuted under the 2022 rules.
Team designers are adamant the performance is in there to be unlocked by some key off-season changes. If they’re right, Brackley will be launched back into the fight for regular wins.
But if they’re wrong, Mercedes may find itself out of title contention for several more years and the era of the Silver Arrows — whatever colour they’re painted — will be at an end.
WHAT WENT WRONG IN 2022?
Last year Mercedes described its difficult car as an onion — each time it would peel off one layer of problems, another layer would be revealed. The entire season was spent peeling away problems only to find new and equally critical issues underneath.
But every now and then the circumstances and conditions would be just right for the promise of the machine to be unleashed.
Early in the year, at the Spanish Grand Prix, Lewis Hamilton had victory-contending pace but was hamstrung by a first-lap incident. Later, in Hungary, George Russell took pole position and both cars got onto the podium.
A big update in the United States saw Hamilton finish a competitive second, and then the team dominated in Brazil, with Russell winning the sprint and the grand prix and Hamilton finishing a close runner-up.
Those heartening performances were enough to convince the team that it wasn’t completely wrong about its aerodynamic philosophy, and partway through the year it discovered what it believed was a critical mistake in the design process at the heart of all its problems — the core of the onion.
The team hasn’t revealed the nature of that flaw, but paddock speculation suggests it relates to the floor, particularly the way its novel sidepod design leaves more of it exposed compared to other cars.
It wasn’t something that could be fixed during the season, particularly with development restrictions and the budget cap in force. Instead it had to be rectified for the 2023 car.
Now presumably rectified, the team has developed a car that looks like a year-on-year evolution, convinced that its original idea can still be saved.
Instead it’s focused on broadening the set-up window by reconfiguring how the front wing loads up on downforce and retooling the rear suspension. Those iconic slimmed-down sidepods remain, at least for now. That should all work to dial out the chronic bouncing of last year, as will the rule tweak raising the minimum floor height.
The result — so Mercedes hopes — is a course correction to where it expected to be when it first started working under the current regulations.
THE PROSPECTS
Mercedes was reasonably confident at the end of last year, when work was already well underway on the new car, that it had things figured out and would at least be returned to the right path. That confidence has evidently carried all the way through to launch day
But the team knows the pitfalls of overconfidence. It hurt itself last year when it saved its definitive aero package for the final three days of testing — it discovered it had crucial problems far too late in the piece and lost the entire year.
Moreover, the botched 2022 campaign cost it significant development time that wasn’t lost to teams already on better development trajectories. There’s much ground to make up.
“We are under no illusions that it is going to be tough,” Elliott said, per The Race. “We are starting behind and we are not the favourites.
“That is an unusual position for us to be in over the last 10 years, but we are focused on ourselves and working out how we do the best job we can.”
But in those tempered expectations is more than just a hint of optimism, and team boss Toto Wolff has allowed himself to talk about regular wins and even potential championships with this car.
“Our hopes and expectations are always to be capable of fighting for a world championship,” he said. “However, our competitors were very strong last year, and we are playing catch-up.
“The entire organisation was pushing flat out last year. When we realised that the car wasn’t where we wanted it to be, we mobilised every reserve we had.
“I see so much effort, motivation, and energy in the organisation to launch a car that will eventually be competitive enough to fight at the very front of the grid.”
The goal to fight for wins this year is clear, even if for now it’s just to do it “eventually”.
WHY THE 2023 GAMBLE IS SO LARGE
Of course every team thinks it’s done a great job during the off-season. It’s not until the car hits the track that Mercedes will know for sure that it’s understood the core problem of its chosen design philosophy.
And that begs the question: why double down at all?
Red Bull Racing stole a march on the field with its own approach to the rules and Ferrari has found a fruitful design pathway. Other teams either arrived at similar ideas on their own or are now borrowing from them, as is standard practice.
The grid is coalescing around these established, proven philosophies. Wouldn’t Mercedes have been better off doing the same rather than risking a still unproven approach?
“I think at times last year we were questioning ourselves and saying, ‘Have we made a major mistake? Do we need to change what we’re fundamentally doing?’,” technical director Mike Elliott said.
“But I think we know if you go and tear it all up and start again, you’re going to start further backwards. So it’s about making those right decisions.
“And I think although we had problems with the car last year, there was also a lot of goodness in the car.
“So I think you have to be careful not to just throw it all away and start again.”
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It must have been a difficult equation to evaluate: start from scratch but definitely write off a couple of seasons or commit to the course and risk falling too far behind in this rules cycle to catch back up.
The significance of that problem shouldn’t be understated. Mercedes was the dominant team of the last decade. It has in its fold Lewis Hamilton, the best driver of his generation and contender for best of all time.
But in the blink of an eye the team can go from being sleeping giant to spent force. And even if Hamilton signs a new contract, as he says he intends to, will it last long enough to get to the other side of a major technical disaster?
These are high stakes indeed.
