"There is no holy cows in our concept" - Mercedes boss Toto Wolff adamant the W13 had 'performance' yet to be unlocked

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff claims the team's 2022 challenger, the W13, still had some pace left to unlock.

The W13 began to perform well at the end of the 2022 season after the team managed to understand the porpoising issues that plagued them in the first half of the season.

Wolff backed his team's 'zero-pod' aerodynamic concept from 2022, claiming that the shape of the sidepods was not the cause of all their woes last year. The Silver Arrows managed to win only one race all season long in 2022 - with George Russell taking his maiden win in the sport at the 2022 F1 Brazilian GP.

Russell's promising first season with the team meant that Mercedes would have likely won a lot more races had they understood the woes with their W13 challenger.

Speaking to the media, Toto Wolff said about the W13:

“Our sidepod design is not something that we believe was fundamentally the reason why we didn’t perform. There is no holy cows in our concept, it’s not that we don’t want to follow anybody’s ideas, we kept with the narrow sidepod as it is. But it’s not the core fundamental performance part as we judge.”

The Mercedes boss added:

“W13 certainly had performance which we never were able to unlock and put all its downforce on the ground."

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Mercedes' George Russell claimed he can't beat Lewis Hamilton in every single session

George Russell outperformed Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton in 2022 but is still realistic about his chances against the Formula 1 legend in the future.

Speaking to The Race about his battle with his teammate, Russell acknowledged that it would be impossible for him to beat Lewis Hamilton all the time. He said:

"I'm not going to beat him every single session, every qualifying, every race. That's just absolutely not going to happen. But having a year like we've had this year, is almost equivalent to maybe what the 95/5 split was for me previously."

Russell added:

"I never doubted myself. I always believed in myself. But if you go with the mindset, 'I'm going to beat Lewis Hamilton 95 percent of the time,' you're going to come away disappointed."

George Russell also believes approaching every weekend, thinking he could beat Hamilton, would lead to constant disappointments. However, the Mercedes driver reckons that his record of beating his teammate by a small margin was something he could continue to achieve.

Beating Lewis Hamilton in equal machinery is a feat that only a few have managed to do in the past, putting Russell in good company.