It’s one thing to be able to sing the MEA culpa and quite another to self-flagellate. This is, more or less, how most Formula 1 fans interpreted the apology letter made public by Mercedes after the Bahrain Grand Prix, the test that opened the World Cup less than a month ago. It is evident that the fifth position occupied by Lewis Hamilton and the sixth position of George Russell do not mix well with the numbers of a team that chained seven consecutive doubles between 2014 and 2020, and that in 2021 fought for the title until the last corner of the last lap.
However, this lack of punch does not justify the permanent lamentations of the Brackley (Great Britain) team. The saddest thing about the matter is that Mercedes apologized in the same note in which it acknowledged having achieved the goal that had been set when projecting the car for this 2023. “We have achieved our objectives [a nivel de rendimiento]. What happens is that those varemos are no longer useful. We are not fast enough ”, read the statement after that first stop on the calendar. “To have a chance of winning we need neither the Red Bulls nor the Ferraris to finish, and now maybe the Aston Martins too,” Hamilton assessed, from Jeddah, where the second grand prix of this year was held, and where the Arrows of Silver finished fourth (Russell) and fifth (Hamilton).
At the gates of the third test of the course, this Sunday in Melbourne (07:00, Dazn), Mercedes has gone and returned with the design of a car that stretched until reality hit the engineers full in the face. At the Albert Park circuit, Russell will accompany Max Verstappen, again in the pole, on the first row of the grid, while Hamilton, third, will be seconded by Fernando Alonso (fourth) in the second. Carlos Sainz, for his part, will start fifth.
Despite having only held two appointments out of the 23 total, the German manufacturer is already working in parallel with two single-seater concepts, after being convinced that the base of the 2022 model has hit a wall. With this, the objective is no longer to bother Red Bull, which this season is light years away, but to gain time with a view to 2024. Splitting up is already difficult in itself, but it is even more so in a framework as restrictive as the that generates the mandatory budget ceiling.
Although the W14 resolved the rebound of the W13 that martyred the British pair of runners so much, the film seen in Bahrain acted as the reagent that led Toto Wolff, the director of the structure, to consider it feasible to make a clean slate. The first real approximation of this change of course could be embodied in Imola, at the end of May, although there are also those who assure that this specification b It will take a couple of months to see the light. For now, the steps that Mercedes has been taking seem to be going in the right direction if we take into account the jump taken by Russell and Hamilton in Australia, where, in one fell swoop, they will start ahead of the Ferraris and the Aston Martins after staying just three tenths of Verstappen.
“It’s an unexpected result, but surely we got the set-up right. There are no miracles in this discipline, but we have shown that we are improving”, agreed Wolff, after the timed session. “Mercedes, who always wants to leave this car and they always lament so much, they are already going fast. They have hidden and halfway through the year they will surely be in a position to fight to win races”, Alonso summed up.
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