Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has more problems on his plate as the budget cap will limit how much his team can spend on improving their car.
The Silver Arrows decided to give their bold 'zeropod' design a second go this year despite their lack of success with this model in 2022. Last month, according to Sky Sports pit lane reporter Ted Kravitz, Mercedes also created another aero package which looks more like the one used by defending champion Red Bull should their struggles continue into the new season.
Developing two different aero design concepts for the new season may come at a cost. Teams are only able to spend so much cash on their car development in this budget cap era of F1, so Mercedes will most likely have less to spend on developments as the season progresses. With drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell facing a long championship season with a W14 that seems to have fallen behind the likes of Red Bull or Aston Martin, Wolff was asked about whether the budget cap is one of his team's biggest issues to overcome.
“I think the budget cap, in a way, has more positives than negatives,” he said. “But obviously, if you’re on the back foot, like we are at the moment, it doesn’t allow you to build a second chassis. But I think our fundamental problem is not building a second chassis or throwing stuff at the car. It’s more about a direction that we’ve taken that’s wrong.
“And I think if we… When we change it now, that’s going to be limited by the budget cap, but not in the way that you would expect, like we’re not able to develop.” As a result, Wolff said that it will reduce the rate of progress Mercedes can hope to make – but does not want to use it as an excuse.
“We’re still able to develop but it will mean we need to spend time on a new concept, on new ideas, and we need to discontinue the old one,” he added. “So, in the short term, it could mean you make a step back before making two forward, but these are the rules. They have been introduced exactly for the reason to put the field stronger together, which will eventually happen.
“I mean, Red Bull is showing us that if you do a good job you can outperform everybody else. But for us, these are the rules and we need to still do a better job.”
So far this season the Silver Arrows have failed to register a podium finish during the first two races of the 2023 season in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Wolff has been very critical of the performances of his team so far and even appeared to concede any hopes of Mercedes winning the championship. But F1 pundit Eddie Jordan however, thinks the Mercedes boss needs to shoulder more responsibility regarding his team’s decline.
“We saw the Mercedes car was poor last year, porpoising up and down but they have eradicated some of that,” Jordan said to OLGB.. “ Lewis Hamilton is a seven-time world champion who has a really impressive teammate in George Russell who was beaten his expectations so far.
“I'm critical of Toto Wolff of how he criticised his engineers and how they took their eye off the ball, it's all been done under his watch so it's his responsibility. The book starts with him, Wolff should face the criticism like a man, like a team boss, like a chief executive and face up to the fact that Mercedes have got it wrong.”
