Mercedes is gearing up for the 2023 F1 season after a disappointing run in 2022.
Mercedes was the biggest sufferer of the new technical regulations among the fastest teams. The side encountered immense porpoising last season, not allowing the team to fight for the championship.
This ended Mercedes’ eight-year streak of continuous Constructor titles. Further, Silver Arrows finished 244 points behind rivals Red bull. The points gap itself speaks a lot considering seven out of ten teams failed to even score that many points.
This season, however, we expect a resurrection from the Brackley-based squad. Nevertheless, Mercedes is much more realistic for this season as the side recently revealed their 2023 car:
“We are under no illusions that it is going to be tough,” quoted technical director Mike Elliott.
“We are starting behind and we are not the favorites. 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.”
Hamilton calls last year’s struggles a “shock” for Mercedes
Seven-time World Champion and Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton will once again join forces with George Russell this season to find glory for the Silver Arrows. The Briton was outscored by his new teammate last year failing to score even a single win:
“I think this year everyone’s a lot more grounded,” Hamilton agreed.
“We perhaps won’t be the fastest out the gate, but we have the potential to hopefully be closer and to close the gap early on in the season.”
Even though many critics believe the unique and radical zero-sidepod design to be a vital reason for Mercedes’s downfall last year, team principal Toto Wolff believes otherwise:
“The narrow sidepod design is not something that we believe was fundamentally the reason why we didn’t perform last year,” Wolff stated.
It will be interesting to see how Mercedes perform in this F1 season as the Silver Arrows are again back in black.
For more sports-related updates, follow us on Twitter.
