McLaren CEO Zak Brown believes that 2024 could be the season that Lewis Hamilton will win his record-breaking eighth Drivers’ Championship trophy. The legendary Brit finished third in the standings in 2023, but Mercedes are hoping to return to title contention with a dramatic overhaul of the W14’s design philosophy.
Since losing his grip on an unprecedented eighth World Championship on the final lap of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, Hamilton has endured a testing time in F1. The 39-year-old is now winless in over two seasons after Mercedes’ gamble on their ‘zeropod’ design concept failed to pay off at the start of the ground-effect era.
Despite the relative struggles of his team Hamilton has proven that, if given the opportunity, he still has the ability to battle reigning world champion Max Verstappen for the title. The pair have shared some tense on-track battles during the past two campaigns with the British driver dragging his Mercedes to 15 podiums since his most recent victory.
Speaking to Speedcafe about his team’s prospects for the 2024 season, Brown explained: “We like what we’re seeing in the wind tunnel and CFD at the moment, so we feel like we’re going to take a step forward.
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“How much? The great mystery on Red Bull is when did they turn off the development of their car to focus on next year. And I think the answer is probably pretty early, so we’ll just have to wait and see how much Adrian Newey magic comes out of the oven so to speak to see where we are.
“And at the same time Mercedes or Ferrari, these teams have everything they need and are great teams and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting here and all of a sudden Mercedes was back to Lewis winning his eighth championship.”
Mercedes will be hoping that with a total overhaul in design concept, they can give Hamilton a car worthy of fighting Red Bull. With James Allison back leading the development, the Silver Arrows are expected to take a radical new path after doubling down on their ill-fated philosophy this time last year.
However, as Brown mentioned, it will be a tough task to match, let alone topple the reigning world champions. Red Bull won 21 of the 22 Grands Prix on offer last year and their dominance was such that they were able to switch their development focus to their 2024 challenger partway through the campaign.
