“Let's hope we're ahead”: Mercedes hope to leapfrog F1 rivals in 2024 car development

Mercedes' technical director James Allison recently laid out the upgrade timeline for his team and mentioned how they hope to stabilize their performance by the end of the 2023 F1 season. The Silver Arrows have experienced several ups and downs this year simply because of different tracks with varied characteristics.

Allison spoke about how the 2023 F1 cars still need a lot of development before they are worthy of winning races and championships. He is well aware of how teams will gradually split their workforces and start developing their 2024 cars, which will cause a bit of a shuffle in the pecking order.

Allison said (via Soymotor):

"We're halfway through the season and there's still a lot of development to be done on these cars. It won't take long for all the teams to focus on 2024, and that will throw us all off a bit on the rate at which we can improve this year's car."

Allison went on to speak about how Mercedes is going to bring upgrades that can also be used on their 2024 F1 car. He continued:

"We'd all like to introduce some more updates, which we will use next season as well. We are not going to waste money; what we want to do is invest in the two seasons with this series of updates. In our case, you will see some improvements for a while longer; I suspect that with the rest of the teams as well."

Lastly, Allison stated that Mercedes could still experience a 'yo-yo' effect of ups and downs in terms of performance in the upcoming races. However, he hopes that their pace will stabilize across various tracks towards the end of the 2023 F1 season. Allison concluded:

"What we are going to have in the next sequence of races is more than anything a yo-yo effect due to a position that is very tight. Improvements can make the difference for a team until another comes with more news. Everything will end up stabilizing in the last third of the season, or perhaps in the fourth. Let's hope we're ahead."

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Mercedes boss admits that the team's development is affected by the cost cap

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff recently explained how his team simply cannot fulfill Lewis Hamilton and George Russell's suggestions and requests for a different car because of strict cost cap regulations. He stated that Mercedes cannot create a B-spec car because of financial constraints.

The Austrian billionaire said (via GPBlog):

"The cost cap is a real constraint now because you cannot just go for a B-spec car. We know that we have Lewis and George being pretty vocal about what they would want to change in a car, and that's simply not possible because we're lacking the financial corridor, and that's why we're looking very much at next year to change these things."

Mercedes is currently second in the constructors' championship with 203 points, while Red Bull is leading the table with 411 points.