F1 pundit claims Mercedes 'had an even more disappointing season than Ferrari'

F1 expert Mark Hughes recently gave his views on how bad Mercedes' season went in 2023. Even though the Silver Arrows secured second place in the constructors' championship, beating Ferrari, Hughes believes that their season has been worse than the Italian giants for several reasons.

Speaking on The Race F1 podcast, the F1 pundit said how Mercedes' faith in a failed concept lingered for far too long into the season, which caused them to lose a lot of development time.

"Mercedes narrowly beat Ferrari to second place in the constructors' championship. I'd argue that they had an even more disappointing season than Ferrari. Failing to win a race first time in 12 years, the concept they kept faith in, it just did not work," he said.

Furthermore, Hughes pointed out that races such as the 2023 F1 Brazilian GP were where the team fell, even when they were making good progress on other race weekends. This showcased the W14's inconsistencies.

"And worse even than that, everytime it looked like they made progress, there was a race like Brazil where they were nowhere. So even late into the season, they were still capable of blindsided by this car," he said.

Though Mark Hughes underlined some good aspects of the Mercedes W14, he claimed that they were not enough, and the overall performance of their car must have utterly shaken the team.

"It had its good points; the right medium-speed corner speed range was pretty good. It treated its tires well in a stint, but they are just crumbs from the table, really. Terrible discrepancy and one which would have shaken the team to it's core," he commented.

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Toto Wolff compares Mercedes' and Red Bull's development cycles for next year's cars

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff is well aware of how quickly a dominant team can switch their focus to the next year's car. His team enjoyed such privileges when they were dominating in F1. Hence, he speculated that Red Bull would have started working on their 2024 F1 car way before everyone else.

Speaking to the media at the season finale in Abu Dhabi, Wolff said (via PlanetF1.com):

“I’m sure that Red Bull has probably switched off – there is no such thing as switching off [completely], but they will have started next year’s car way ahead of everybody else.

"If we were in this situation, looking at our historic strategy, we would probably have been all hands on deck by July on next year’s car."