George Russell has piled pressure onto Mercedes’ engineers by insisting that the Silver Arrows will not run into the same developmental problems in the New Year that they ran into last season with the W14.
Russell and Lewis Hamilton were very vocal about their frustrations with the 2023 concept. Russell suggested that the W14 was even harder to drive than the troubled W13 car of 2022 while Hamilton claimed the two cars were “pretty much the same”.
Regardless, both models were a far cry away from the W12 that won Mercedes their eighth Constructor Championship in 2021. Since then, Red Bull have reigned supreme over the sport.
This year, the Austrian team broke the record for the most accumulated points in a single season, 860, and picked up their second consecutive constructors’ title at the Japanese Grand Prix – six races before the end of the 2023 campaign.
Meanwhile, Mercedes narrowly saw off Ferrari for second place – 451 points adrift of Red Bull. If the Silver Arrows have any hope of keeping up with the reigning champions then they will need to produce a car that can challenge Red Bull’s engineering. Russell is confident that the 2024 W15 fits that bill after making some good gains over the winter.
“Last year’s was a trickier car to drive. We made some big improvements but what has caught us out this year has stemmed from the winter development,” Russell told assembled media.
“We took the wrong direction. We made some mistakes and that was evident as soon as we hit the track in Bahrain. Going into our third year now, I’m confident we’re not going to make those same mistakes.
“We’ve got some good gains over this winter we’re finding at the moment. But maybe it’s all relative and we don’t know what our rivals are going to bring.”
