F1 News: Toto Wolff Has High Hopes For Mercedes W14 - "It's Full Of Surprises"
Mercedes team principal, Toto Wolff has spoken about the highly anticipated W14.
The team struggled with many issues on the W13 throughout the 2022 season which started off with major porpoising problems. Once the team had been able to get those under control, they found further issues with the car.
Wolff has spoken to PlanetF1.com about the 2023 car. He explained that although it looks very similar to the W13, it is very different underneath:
“It’s full of surprises. The last time I saw it I thought ‘oh this looks the same [as the W13]’ but here’s hoping it’s not the same.
“I’m pretty much like you, I go into the wind tunnel and it looks like this year’s car but they say to me it’s very different underneath.
“It’s about the airflow, it’s about the weight distribution, it’s about the aero map.
“Our car fundamentally changed mid-year. We changed the concept but we couldn’t see anything on the bodywork.”
Reflecting on the issues the team encountered throughout 2022, Wolff explained that they kept finding one problem after another. He said:
“I think we have a much better understanding of what the problems were. We’ve been peeling only a layer of the onion, layers of discovering more issues and more problems, but I think we’ve come to the point that we understand pretty well why the car is not performing.
“The correlation at least is there for some tracks so it’s all in the fine detail of how can we make the car work out aerodynamically, how can we improve the ride and make it more fun?
“I think if we’re able to solve that over the winter, at least we can provide a stable platform to the drivers and we can develop it from there.”