Mercedes top executive makes confession: 'We knew before'

Mercedes is having a very disappointing season. The team had hoped to fight it out with Red Bull but is in reality the third or fourth team on the grid. The German racetrack knew before the winter tests in Bahrain that the W14 would not be competitive, technical director Andrew Shovlin acknowledges in a conversation with Autosport.com.

Toto Wolff has already frequently hinted that Mercedes is shaking up the car. Within the next few races, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton's bolide will receive updates, in the hope of performing better. While panic struck the Brackley factory after the first race in Bahrain, Mercedes had been aware of the W14's defects for some time. "You can look at your development rates in the wind tunnel, and before we even got to Bahrain, there were conversations about looking at bigger [concept] departures," confessed technical man Andrew Shovlin.

'Metamorphosis at Mercedes'

Team boss Wolff stated that the concept of the car was wrong, Shovlin specifies the flaw. "Perhaps we've adopted the word concept to mean sidepod." Or rather a lack of them. Mercedes surprised friend and foe over a year ago by presenting a car without sidepods. "This car is an evolution of the car that we had last year, and a lot of that is tied around where we've got the side impact structure. So now we're looking at bigger departures because it's evident that this hasn't given us the performance that we'd like." the Briton said.