Toto Wolff reveals Mercedes plan to change car concept after agreeing with Lewis Hamilton over problems
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Published 05/03/2023 at 12:48 GMT
Not a single race has yet been and gone in the 2023 F1 season, but already Toto Wolff says that Mercedes need to change their car concept to regularly compete with Red Bull again. The Mercedes team principal made the comments ahead of race day at the Bahrain Grand Prix, and they followed seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton's opinion that Mercedes were on the "wrong track".
Lewis Hamilton races a Top Gun fighter plane
Toto Wolff admits that Mercedes will need to completely change their car in order to challenge at the top of F1 again.
Wolff made the comments after Lewis Hamilton expressed his frustration at the lack of progress at Mercedes, saying his team were on the "wrong track".
George Russell and Hamilton will start the season's first race - the Bahrain GP - sitting sixth and seventh respectively, after finishing more than six tenths behind Max Verstappen, who takes pole position for Sunday's curtain-raiser.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1 and the assembled media, Wolff said: "We are absolutely in the same choir [he and Hamilton].
"I don't think that this package is going to be competitive eventually.
"We gave it our best go over the winter and now we all just need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, be totally non-dogmatic and ask what is the development direction we want to pursue in order to be able to win races.
"We hit our targets. That's why I say we gave it our best shot. But the moment comes when the stopwatch comes out and that showed us that we are not good enough.
"At this team we blame the problem not the person. I have responsibilities. I need to fire myself if I want to do something.
"We got it wrong last year. We thought we could fix it by sticking to the concept of car but it didn't work out. So we just need to switch our focus on to what we believe is the right direction."
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Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes)
Image credit: Getty Images
Last season was one to forget for Mercedes after winning only a solitary race, but they began 2023 without overhauling this year’s car and have seemingly fallen even further behind Red Bull.
That decision now appears to be being reversed by Wolff, but he admitted that closing the gap on Red Bull will not happen overnight.
"You know motor racing is crazy," Wolff added.
"I don't know what is going to happen this year. We may find a silver bullet next week and gain five tenths, but I haven't seen any silver bullets before.
"If you look at the pecking order today, you would say that catching Red Bull is not realistic.
"But I'm looking at what we can find next week, what is the change of direction that we can implement and how quickly can we do that? Maybe we can turn the ship around this year but it needs a lot to change the pecking order."
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