Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims Silver Arrows ‘yet to optimise’ W14

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff claimed that while the team had a generally positive outing in the first day of pre-season testing in Bahrain on Thursday, there is still plenty to work on in terms of optimizing the car.

This time last season, Mercedes found themselves in a position where they struggled from severe porpoising issues that eventually cost them a shot at a ninth consecutive constructors' championship title.

With significantly fewer signs of porpoising in the team's 2023 challenger, the W14, Wolff claimed that George Russell was "happy with the car". He added that the lack of bouncing has hugely helped the team gather important data that will be used to create the "base" for preparing a car that has the potential to fight for the championship title.

Speaking to the media during the lunchtime break, the Austrian said:

“He [Russell] was certainly happy with the car. It seems to be balanced in the right way. We haven’t seen any bouncing. We had a little bit of a movement in turn 12 but not to anywhere close to the degree that we had last year. We’re getting a lot of data that was important to correlate, obviously after last year.”

“Because the car was just bouncing around [last year] and we weren’t really able to drive it correctly. So that is very different. I think we have a solid base now to work from and try to optimise the car which we haven’t done yet. It’s really just finding out are there any areas that could be real performance [improvements]?”

Lewis Hamilton finished the day with the sixth-fastest lap time, while his Mercedes team-mate set the ninth-fastest lap time. Reigning world champion Max Verstappen led the time charts.

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George Russell does not have the "cut-throat" nature to beat Mercedes team-mate, says former F1 driver

Former F1 driver Mark Blundell believes that George Russell does not necessarily have the fighter mentality needed to beat arguably the most successful F1 driver in history, Lewis Hamilton. The British drivers had a good friendship in their first season together last year, but Blundell is of the opinion that these dynamics could potentially change in 2023 as Mercedes look to get back to the front of the grid.

As reported by PlanetF1, when asked if Russell has the "cut-throat" nature needed to go against team orders if asked to back down in support of Hamilton, Blundell said:

“I don’t see that at the moment in George Russell, but I don’t know him that well. But you know, from the outside looking in, he seems an incredibly nice guy and doesn’t seem to have that little edge to him. But, you know, we’re talking about putting him in the situation where we see whether that decision is going to get taken and to date, he’s not quite been in that situation to make that decision.”

“That’s going to be the interesting point. You know, if he’s 15, 16 races into a championship and he’s leading it, is he going to start to get cut-throat and carve out a niche for himself inside the team and Lewis is going to be sitting there, you know, wondering what’s going on? We’re going to have to wait and see whether that develops. But yeah, I don’t think the decision has had to be made by him yet on that side. So that’s something that we’re going to all watch and see how it pans out.”

George Russell out-performed the seven-time world champion last season, finishing fourth in the drivers' standings, while Hamilton came sixth. Mercedes finished the season third in the constructors' standings in 2022.