Mercedes confirms: 'The car will visibly change soon'

Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' trackside engineering director, has confirmed that the team will soon make major changes to the car. In a video on the YouTube channel of Mercedes, Shovlin answers a number of questions regarding the design of the car.

Last year, Mercedes slowly managed to connect with the leading team after a difficult start. Several times, the team was even able to compete for the win, which was finally rewarded at the second-to-last race with its first victory of the season. It was expected that Mercedes would be able to continue this upward trend in 2023 and take a regular seat on the podium again. After the first race in Bahrain, however, that by no means seems to be the case: Mercedes finished fifth and seventh and competed more with Aston Martin than with Red Bull.

Consequently, one of the questions Shovlin was asked was whether Mercedes is going to turn the concept of the car upside down in the near future. "People have tended to use the word concept when they mean the sidepod design," Shovlin began his explanation. "Toto [Wolff] has said recently that we’re looking at a revision of that that’s coming in the next few races anyway."

'These kinds of changes take a bit longer'

"Now, given the gap to the front, of course we’re gonna look at bigger departures, more radical changes", Shovlin continued. "But those changes take time to turn into a faster solution in the windtunnel, so you can’t do them overnight, there’s quite a lot of development that you’ve got to do around any sort of big changing in geometry in that area. So as I said, of course we’re looking where we can improve the car, we’re looking for potential to develop, and you will see visible changes coming on the car over the next few races."