"It got better and better and better": Mercedes boss on the misleading path that led to the 2023 F1 car concept

After suffering an underwhelming start to the 2023 season, Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has revealed the reasons why the team stuck with their 2022 car concept. Continuing with their radical design concept, the Brackley-based outfit continue to suffer from the choices they made in the previous season.

Mercedes' 2022 season was crippled by porpoising. Even when the issue was resolved, they were unable to extract maximum performance from the ill-fated W13. However, the team's hopes of remerging as a front-runner were revitalized. in the second half of the season. This came with significant improvement in pace coupled with a 1-2 finish in Brazil.

F1 Grand Prix of Brazil 2022

In the first race of the season, the team realized it had taken a step in the wrong direction. Toto Wolff describes the late-season improvements in the previous year as 'the perfect storm' that eventually misled the team.

In an interview with Motorsport.com, Wolff said:

"It got better and better and better. We were competitive in the American races. We won in Interlagos, we knew that Abu Dhabi [where Mercedes struggled] is a bit different."

He added:

"That was the perfect storm for us. It wasn't good for 2023. We thought we were on the right track and the concept works. But it didn't."

Mercedes spent the previous year trying to understand the characteristics of the W13. While trying to resolve the critical issues of the car, they lost performance as they couldn't run the car close to the ground.

Lamenting about their previous year's performance, the 51-year-old added:

"Last year was tough because we didn't understand. It came as such a surprise that we put the car in a zone where it wasn't generating any performance. In any case, not performance that we thought it was important."

"And this year, the second year into the regulations, there's a lot of evidence about what went wrong."

The weekend in Brazil last year turned out to be a false awakening for the German team as they continued to chase down the rabbit hole.

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Toto Wolff not willing to reset long-term targets for Mercedes

Even after starting the 2023 season like last year, team boss Toto Wolff is not willing to change their long-term targets of fighting for the championship.

He said:

"I don't want to change the targets yet about fighting for a world championship, even though it doesn't look realistic. But I want to keep the motivation high to do the best possible job."

After failing to meet its expectations in the first few races of the season, the team is willing to bin its design concept. Speaking about the upgrades in the pipeline for W14, Wolff explained:

"We're bringing quite some steps, a change of car layout from Imola onwards and we must see how that performs."

Before taking on the mighty Red Bull squad, the Mercedes team boss aims to beat Ferrari and Aston Martin in the upcoming races.