Can the W14 take Mercedes back to the top of F1?

The ‘back in black’ jokes have already been done to death. After one season of its traditional silver livery, Mercedes has switched back to the paint scheme that served it so well in 2020 and 2021. Not that there’s much paint to speak of; switching to a black car has been predominantly an exercise in weight-saving.

Objectively, 2022 wasn’t all that miserable given Mercedes still claimed a race win, multiple podiums, and third in the championship. Not that the team sees it that way because anything less than a clinical display of domination in both championships does not sit particularly well in the Mercedes camp. The W13 represented something of a problem child and, although it managed to fly right by the end of the season, it was still a bump back to earth after years of championship glory.

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The team must now hope that the W14 picks up from its stronger end-of-2022 showing, move things on considerably, and bring the team into play to duel against Ferrari and Red Bull. It follows along a similar ethos to last year’s car, but the all-black W14 has refined much of those quirks in design. Again, these are only launch images, and Mercedes does have previous of releasing renders and then showing something different off in testing – it's how the smaller sidepods remained hidden for so long.

Although the nose is slightly wider compared to last year’s car, the front wing is perhaps the more interesting part to gaze at. Last year’s Mercedes took an extreme view of the regulations defining how the wing elements must join seamlessly with the endplates, sweeping the attachment points increasingly far forward to open up a slot in the endplate’s trailing edge. That’s now forbidden, and so Mercedes appears to have circumvented that by ensuring that the wing attachment stays are as small as can be. This will generate the change to produce outwash – outwardly prevailing air that can be moved around the front tyre.

The wing itself seems to be more inboard-loaded compared to its predecessor, while the tops of the endplates appear to turn into the front of the tyres – presumably to create some degree of interaction there. At the front, the suspension appears to retain the downwardly angled pushrod working with the upper wishbone to place oncoming airflow downward to minimise any blockage to the sidepods. That said, the suspension package itself has been revised to improve the handling and set-up capabilities of the car.

The Mercedes W14 renders detail key changes to the front wing

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

Here, Mercedes has persisted with its tiny sidepod footprint, complete with side-on letterbox inlet. The shrink-wrapped sidepods have been reformulated this time and are at their widest around the middle rather than at the front, perhaps to introduce some of the in-vogue downwashing towards the floor. As for the inlet, it’s much squarer to allow for a subtle undercut further down the flanks. The cooling slots run along the top contours of the pods, helping with further flow direction.

Above that, there are subtle influences from some of the design trends seen last year – particularly with the tunnelled bodywork opening. This should allow for more hot air to be displaced around the tailpipe, and presumably placing that air between the rear wing and beam wing isn’t quite as aerodynamically critical. Thus, the bodywork around the air intake looks less bulbous compared to the W13, allowing for a slightly more conventional shark fin to fit in.

That covers the new furniture on top of the car, but the elephant in the room – and one that remains obscured - pertains to the floor. Much of Mercedes’ 2022 woes stemmed from the philosophy in running the car close to the ground to try to draw huge levels of downforce out, but the knock-on effect of that meant that the W13 was one of the worst affected by porpoising.

"It's all going to be in the details. It's a lot of the bits that you can't see, particularly under the floors. There's going to be a lot of development" Mike Elliott, Mercedes technical director

The FIA has introduced changes to the floors, trimming the fences and edges by 15mm, to stop teams running their cars ‘on the deck’. Oscillation metrics have also been introduced to ensure there’s no spikes in vertical travel, cumulatively prompting a rethink in designs to ensure the cars can run without any danger of bouncing.

Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott explained at the launch that much of Mercedes’ focus – and object of subsequent development – was within the floor as the team bids to catch up.

“It's all going to be in the details. It's a lot of the bits that you can't see, particularly under the floors. There's going to be a lot of development. I think some of the key bits for, as we've completely changed front and rear suspension, trying to help with the weight of the car, but also trying to help with some of the handling,” Elliott said.

The most vital updates to Mercedes' challenger and its floor were hidden away at the launch

Photo by: Mercedes AMG

“The core DNA is still the same, but there's quite significant changes in the bodywork. We've looked at every single area and said, ‘well, how can we improve what we've done?’ We looked at the problems we had last year and said, ‘well, there's no guarantees, but how do we guarantee as best we can we don't have those problems this year?’ So it's all in the details.”

Of course, the Mercedes fanbase might be a touch worried that the W14 isn’t a clean-sheet design, given the W13’s shortcomings. That’s partly a legacy of the cost-cap arrangement, and designing an entirely new car would be difficult to justify unless the previous model was a stinker.

Admitting that Mercedes questioned if it had made a fundamental design mistake with its previous car, Elliott contends that there was “goodness” in the W13 concept. He explained that starting from scratch would have potentially left the team even further behind as it hopes to return to regular runs at the front of the pack. The strong reliability of the previous year’s car presented a good starting point for the development of the W14, and the focus from there has been building strengths in other areas.

“If you look at the periods we had huge success, it's easy to take the car you've got and think: ‘well, we will just build on that.’ I think at times last year, we were questioning ourselves and saying, have we made a major mistake? Do we need to change what we're fundamentally doing?” Elliott explained.

"But I think we know if we go in, tear it all up and start again, you know you're going to start further backwards. So it's about making those right decisions. Although we had problems with the car last year, I think there was also a lot of goodness in the car. There's also a lot of things that did work for us. I think the drivers have talked about reliability, and that's been good. I think you have to be careful and not just throw it all away and start again.”

For Mercedes, 2023 needs to be a return to form and will hope 2022 was a mere blip on its radar. But it likely won’t be an overnight change; Mercedes has strong competition to face up to if it has successfully completed a turnaround in fortunes. It’s guaranteed that every F1 fan would dearly love a titanic title scrap between three teams, and the pressure is on Mercedes to join the battle.

The W14 certainly looks the part, and some of the awkward styling cues of last year’s car have been thankfully straightened out. “Is she gonna be as fast as she looks?” mused Toto Wolff at the launch. “I hope so.”

If it helps F1 enjoy its biggest championship battle in a few years, a lot more people besides Wolff will be hoping for the W14 to deliver on its promises.

Can the W14 put Mercedes back in the F1 world title fight?

Photo by: Mercedes AMG