After eight consecutive constructors’ championships, Mercedes F1 experienced a strong fall from the Formula 1 throne in the last two years due to the poor and inconsistent performance of its successive W13 and W14 cars – against the dominant Red Bull RB18 and RB19.

Even the struggling W13 won a GP in Brazil last year, a feat this year’s W14 failed to repeat despite a radical redesign of its aerodynamic platform mid-season, leaving the team winless for the first time in a decade.

The Brackley team has long confirmed that its car will be completely redesigned for 2024, with James Allison returning to the role of technical director last spring.

And now team manager Toto Wolff has revealed further details: “We are changing the entire design philosophy. We completely deviate from the way we defined the chassis, weight distribution and airflow.”said the Austrian about the Mercedes W15 2024.

“I mean, literally almost everything will change, because that’s the only way I think we can have hope. Of course we could be wrong. Everything is possible: not to win as much as we hope, but to close the gap [με τη Red Bull] with a big step or fight for the top”Wolff added.

When asked whether there was optimism or skepticism at Brackley about the car’s new design philosophy and its potential to take the team back to the top, he replied: “I have never been optimistic about anything in my life.

Maybe I’ll listenIt’s a bit miserable, but it helped me meet my expectations and helped me try harder. Because I believe it’s never enough. Because of this, I have a bittersweet feeling. We won second place in the league but lost first place.”Wolff added.

And he came to the conclusion: “We have to accept it, be humble and think positively.” Because we have to climb Everest to catch them Red Bull. I have no doubt that she will be too McLaren in the battle of time, and perhaps the Aston Martin and maybe others too.

We must leave no stone unturned and that is what we do [στον τομέα κινητήρων] in Brixworth and Brackley. And as hard as it is to remember that we came second, it’s also a great opportunity to come back and aim for the stars.”

Speaking about the new opportunity of the coming season, Lewis Hamilton (who is aiming for a record eighth championship of his career) said his team has little scope to make a mistake with their car for the third time in the current season. which began with the new technical regulations 2022.

When asked how great the pressure was on Toto Wolff in this context, the 38-year-old replied “Huge pressure, no doubt. Not just Toto, but all of us in the team. Back at the factory, everyone is under enormous pressure. In the end, as a manager like Toto, you will have to start relying more on people. And that’s not easy, because at a certain point people break down.

So how do you do that in a constructive way and in a way that inspires them to keep going? I hope that some of the results and achievements I was able to achieve can be a source of inspiration for children [στο εργοστάσιο]. So that they think that we are “close to the source,” even if it goes through the entire system.” Hamilton continued.

And regarding the direction Mercedes will take in the design and development of the W15, he emphasized: “We didn’t have a North Star [να μας οδηγεί] definitely at the beginning of the season to know where we should work towards. And you do a damn zigzag to figure out where to go.

But yeah, I think we have a north star now that we didn’t have in the previous two years. But again, it’s not the most direct way to get where we want. In the last few years there have been certain things, decisions that we have made that have led us to a dead end and you can’t do anything because of the budget limit and all that.

When you see them Red Bull, Who did a great job? Since Bahrain last year they had the bounce problem and fixed it within the same week. It’s like trying to build a wall, putting one brick at a time as you progress [του αυτοκινήτου].

We had to tear down the wall. We had a lot of aerodynamic performance in the first year, but we had to take a lot of it out (ps: because of the bounce problem) and then add lift back in little by little. But every time we tried to add something, it got worse. We haven’t seen any improvement in a long time.

So imagine that [η Red Bull] go ahead. We are on such different paths. But I think we understand a bit more about the car now. And we’ve built great tools behind the scenes. So of course I’m hopeful. But I won’t hold my breath”concluded Lewis Hamilton.