Mercedes ‘civil war’ warning after Hamilton and Wolff’s ‘snappy comments’
After enduring a torrid 2022 campaign, Mercedes have made another poor start to F1 2023 with Hamilton finishing fifth in the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, over 50 seconds behind Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and two places ahead of teammate George Russell.
Over the Bahrain weekend team principal Wolff admitted Mercedes had made a mistake in continuing to pursue their unique ‘zero sidepod’ concept and demanded “radical” change after what he described as being “one of the worst days in racing”.
Wolff’s comments followed scathing criticism from Hamilton, who later claimed Mercedes ignored his concerns over the development of their W14 challenger, which has so far failed to be an improvement on the troubled W13.
Respected F1 technical expert Craig Scarborough believes the public questioning of Mercedes’ car concept highlights all is not well at the once dominant Brackley squad.
“Mercedes have got a really tricky choice now because they already have a development programme in hand,” Scarborough said on Peter Windsor’s YouTube channel.
“So we know that there’s a new floor coming for the next race. We don’t know how big a step that is, but if you were to change anything on the car the floor would be the thing that you would change first.
“We know there is this much-talked-about Imola upgrade. This came to light [in] pre-season during testing and they said, ‘yes, we’ve got a big update coming’, which is not unusual for Mercedes and it didn’t sound like it was a reaction to any problems they were having with the car and they were talking again about the sidepods and some of the car concept changing ever so slightly.
“So we’ve got that in the pipeline already and now you’ve got Toto and Lewis saying that we’re going to develop a completely new concept for this car to make it win races.
“You do wonder how much these kind of snappy comments in the press are related to what the engineers are doing, James Allison and everyone else back at Brackley trying to decide what to do to get this car to be competitive.
“And you have to guess, given their success over the past decade, that they know how to do that. So there’s almost like a civil war going on.”
Scarborough stressed that a major concept change will prove a major challenge for Mercedes to pull off amid the wind tunnel and CFD restrictions faced in F1’s cost cap era.
“There’s two ways you can tackle it,” he explained.
“It could be mainly an aero update to the car and the suspension, which under the budget cap is kind of doable from a ‘let’s make the bodywork and change the suspension components perspective but then you think they need this out quickly, or else there’s no point spending all of that money.
“And then you’ve then got the aero testing restrictions, which of course their good finish [of] third last year will really restrict them.
“So they can’t just suddenly pile on loads of wind tunnel and CFD testing, which is what you would need to do in order to find a new concept to get it working – find the right concept as well, not just pluck one out at random – and then develop it to a stage where it’s better than something that’s already been quite well optimised.
“That’s the problem. That’s the thing that’s going to hold them back.
“It’s going to take them half a season to get the aero work completed before they start putting bits and pieces into production.
“Not to mention, obviously, all the rig work which isn’t as restricted in terms of suspension as much but it is that problem they have between the suspension and the aero that is the fundamental problem that they’re having. So it’s a big issue.
“The only good point is if they do put a huge effort into this year, next year’s regulations are going to be very much the same. I don’t know of any changes for 2024 at this stage, certainly nothing considerable like we’ve had with the floor over the winter, so any work they put in this year will pay off next year.
“So are they going to go for a good second half of the season and a great 2024? That’s a big risk and that’s a big piece of work.
“I don’t know if going to a B-spec car is necessarily the right direction for where they’re at at this stage.”
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for Crash.net around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
