Toto Wolff reveals Mercedes W14 design will be ‘full of surprises’

Toto Wolff smiles. Baku June 2022. Credit: Alamy

Toto Wolff has hinted that the W14 design will be “full of surprises” as the Silver Arrows recover from a disastrous 2022.

Mercedes ended the season with just one win as the W13 proved to be the most difficult car in the German constructor’s history.

After Wolff recently hinted that the problems for the W13 were already present in October of last year, it is safe to assume that Mercedes has been working on the 2023 car for a number of months already.

Mercedes have previously shown they are capable of pulling a few tricks out of the bag as their arriving car for the 2022 season is notoriously lacking in sidepods compared to its rivals and teams are unveiling their contributions for the upcoming season next month Wolff has hinted that the car will be very different this time.

“It’s full of surprises,” Wolff told media outlets like PlanetF1.com. “The last time I saw it, I was like, ‘Oh, that looks the same [as the W13]’ but we hope it’s not the same.

Given the major change in regulations for the 2022 season, it’s likely that the W14 will share at least some aesthetic qualities with the W13, and Wolff admitted that while his successor looked similar, he was assured he was very different underneath.

“I’m quite similar to you, I go into the wind tunnel and it looks like this year’s car, but I’m told it’s very different underneath.

“It’s about airflow, it’s about weight distribution, it’s about aeromap.

“Our car changed fundamentally in the middle of the year. We changed the concept, but we couldn’t see anything on the bodywork.”

Even though the cars look similar, Wolff hopes none of the W13’s bad habits have been inherited. He said discovering and fixing the W13’s problems is like peeling an onion.

“I think we have a much better understanding of what the problems were,” he explained. “We’ve only peeled one layer of the onion, discovered layers, more problems and more problems, but I think we’ve gotten to a point where we understand pretty well why the car isn’t working.

The story goes on

“At least at some tracks the correlation is there, so it’s all in the fine details of how we can make the car run aerodynamically, how we can improve the driveability and make it more fun?

“I think if we can solve that over the winter, we can at least give the riders a stable platform and develop them from there.”

Read more: 10 storylines to look forward to ahead of the new 2023 F1 season

Article Toto Wolff reveals Mercedes W14 design will be ‘full of surprises’ appeared first on Planetf1.com.