Mercedes must commit to an F1 concept car, says Wolff

Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says his team must make an immediate call on the design direction of its Formula 1 car as it cannot afford to split resources between different projects.

The German manufacturer endured a difficult F1 season opener in Bahrain last weekend, with its W14 proving much slower compared to rivals than it had anticipated.

The gap to pace-setter Red Bull is immense and, having been overtaken by client team Aston Martin, Wolff has already admitted that Mercedes’ current concept will not be good enough to become a winner of the title

While this points to a new direction for 2024 and beyond, Mercedes has yet to address what it can achieve this season.

And while a lot of work has gone into improvements to the W14, with a sidepod revamp coming up for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola, Wolff has hinted that the team may have to change course entirely .

With the limits of the cost cap meaning there isn’t the luxury of running parallel W14 improvement programs and working on a new B-spec concept for this campaign later on, Wolff says the team must choose one direction or another.

Asked about the difficulties of developing an all-new design under the cost limit, Wolff said: “It’s extremely difficult to get that advantage, but it’s what we have to do. We have no choice.

“I’m not sure the budget cap gives you limitations on where we are, but we have to decide which direction we’re going and put all the resources behind it. We’re still developing a car. The question is which car.”

With the Imola update expected to take just two to three tenths of a second, Wolff already knows it won’t be enough to put Mercedes at the top of the grid.

That is why he insists that brave decisions should be made immediately instead of delaying things further.

“We’ll tackle it straight away because when you look at where we were at the end of the season, where it looked like we caught up a lot and it was just a matter of which circuits suited us and which didn’t, we seem to have almost doubled, if not tripled, the gap with Red Bull,” he said. “That’s what we have to look at.

“Everything in between, Ferrari, Aston, is just a sideshow. Having said that, what Aston Martin achieved is a good inspiration because they came back from two seconds off the pace to be the second fastest team. And everything is wrong with us.

“The single-lap pace is still good, but in the race we saw the consequences. To put it bluntly, we lack aero strength, sliding the tires and going backwards.”

Wolff said both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell understood the scale of the response Mercedes needed to make and the potential there was to make some short-term sacrifices.

“Drivers are fully aware,” he said. “We are talking about it openly to the whole team. Everyone is aware, it’s not about finding 0.3 seconds and polishing the car.

“This is a serious performance issue that we need to find to put ourselves back in a position to contend for wins and championships.”