Mercedes boss shares details about upcoming W14 car: "It’s full of surprises"

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims the team's 2023 challenger, the W14, will be 'full of surprises'. His comments come after the team struggled to understand the 2022 aero regulations, leading to a dramatic fall from grace.

The Silver Arrows ended the 2022 season with only one win to their name - at the Brazilian GP - leading to their worst season so far in the turbo-hybrid era. The German team failed to understand the new aerodynamic philosophy the sport adopted, leading to immense porpoising in Lewis Hamilton and George Russell's W13. Wolff claims the new car will be very different this time around, despite sharing some esthetic qualities with its predecessor.

The Mercedes boss told the media:

“It’s full of surprises. The last time I saw it I thought ‘oh this looks the same [as the W13]’ but here’s hoping it’s not the same.”

The Austrian exec also claimed that the team now has a better understanding of their issues in 2022 and is working day and night on rectifying them for the upcoming season. He continued:

“I think we have a much better understanding of what the problems were. We’ve been peeling only a layer of the onion, layers of discovering more issues and more problems, but I think we’ve come to the point that we understand pretty well why the car is not performing."

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Mercedes will 100% recover from dismal 2022 season, claims Toto Wolff

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is certain his team will recover from their disappointing campaign in 2022. The Austrian exec is sure the Silver Arrows will not repeat the mistakes of the dominant teams before them.

Wolff revealed that Mercedes is spending a good amount of time understanding why dominant teams fall from the top steps of the sport. Expressing confidence in his team bouncing back in 2023, he told the media:

"We are analysing the seasons in the past for why teams that dominated over an era suddenly lost performance. You can trace it back pretty well; a change in the regulation, people leaving, a tyre that fundamentally changed. For us, the regulation changed - we got it wrong. But all the other pillars are still in place. I'm 100% sure that this was a difficult year that was necessary for us to re-energise the organisation."

The eight-time constructors' champions will be trying their best to return to the top steps of the sport once again. It will be interesting to see whether the W14 can provide a stable platform for its drivers to seek yet another world championship title.