Lewis Hamilton fears the Red Bull-style sidepods on Mercedes’ 2023 F1 car won’t improve the W14, and may even slow it down. After a poor start to its new campaign, Mercedes confirmed it would move away from its obsessive design concept over the winter, following its eight-year stint of constructors’ title was ended strongly by Red Bull last season.
Mercedes’ most eye-catching concept was the ‘zero sidepod’ design, but there is speculation that the future will adopt something closer to Red Bull’s traditional design. Aston Martin, which embraced the Red Bull philosophy, has already enjoyed great success, with Fernando Alonso scoring two podiums. Hamilton, who finished fifth behind teammate George Russell at the F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, where Sergio Perez led Max Verstappen to Red Bull’s second one-two of the season, might be a game changer for Mercedes. He says he doesn’t expect an update. “We want to keep working with what we have and try to get more out of it. We’ll see how quickly we can do that, or if we can do that with the concept we have now. I want to go,” Hamilton told Sky Sport F1. “In the short term, we’ll see if we have to make a big, drastic change. I mean, a radical change.” “It’s not that simple.” “Of course there are various factors that people don’t know of course because they’re not aerodynamicists so they can’t see. There’s a lot more.” “I was right regarding the car design issue.” Hamilton was dissatisfied with the car’s performance at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix in March and publicly called out the team for not listening to his opinion on the development of the car. It was criticized and became a hot topic. In Saudi Arabia, he regretted “I may have chosen the wrong words” and reiterated that he would remain with the team following his contract expired at the end of the season, but the 38-year-old said he was right in his opinion on the development of the car. claims to have been proven. “I’m a person who likes to be right all the time, but I’m not always right, but in this scenario I was right,” said Hamilton. “So it was rather good, and I was like, ‘It’s exactly what I said.'” “It’s a team collaboration. After all, I’m not a designer, I’m a driver, but I’m the gateway to the car’s performance. So we’re working on continuing to trust each other in what we’re going to give back.”They listen to me and seeing the success we’ve built so far, we both have different opinions. “Different opinions are inevitable in relationships.” So it’s important to huddle around how can we fix it, what can we do, how much energy are we going to put into it?”
