The "perfect storm" that led Mercedes down the wrong F1 path in 2023

Mercedes' crippling 2022 porpoising issues are well documented, the team unable to run the W13 as low as it wanted to extract its ultimate performance.

But over the second half of the season the Brackley team's fortunes changed, and Lewis Hamilton and George Russell became more and more competitive.

Certainly, the pair had grabbed a fair share of podiums already, but they were often helped by reliability issues for one of the Ferrari.

But in Mexico, where Russell and Hamilton outqualified Sergio Perez and both Ferraris, there were signs that Mercedes was starting to turn the ship around. And a win for Russell in Sao Paulo, a 1-2 ahead of Hamilton, appeared to show that its unique concept was coming good.

According to team principal Toto Wolff, that late upturn in form caused a "perfect storm", which convinced the team to stick to its guns for 2023 and persist with a W14 car following a similar concept.

It was only until this season's opener in Bahrain, when freed from the shackles of porpoising Mercedes discovered it had actually lost ground to Red Bull instead of catching up, that it should have followed through on changing course, a switch which is now in the works for Imola instead.

"A perfect storm," Wolff called Russell's Brazil win in an exclusive interview with Autosport.

"It got better and better and better. We were competitive in the American races. We won in Interlagos, we knew that Abu Dhabi [where Mercedes struggled] is a bit different.

"That was the perfect storm for us. It wasn't good for 2023. We thought we were on the right track and the concept works. But it didn't.

"Last year was tough because we didn't understand. It came as such a surprise that we put the car in a zone where it wasn't generating any performance. In any case, not performance that we thought it was important.

"And this year, the second year into the regulations, there's a lot of evidence about what went wrong."

Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes-AMG, 2nd position, is congratulated by George Russell, Mercedes-AMG

Photo by: John Toscano / Motorsport Images

With Brazil's false dawn in mind, Mercedes hasn't been swayed by some of its stronger 2023 performances, such as Hamilton's second place in Australia, instead doubling down on its planned car changes.

It also has the task of coming up with a car lay-out that Hamilton is more comfortable with, as the seven-time world champion is not finding his groove yet due to certain characteristics of the W14.

While Red Bull looks to be running away with the championship at an even faster rate than 2022, Wolff says he doesn't want to stop "aiming for the stars", with an intermediate objective of fending off the challenge from Ferrari and 2023 surprise package Aston Martin.

"I don't want to change the targets yet about fighting for a world championship, even though it doesn't look realistic," he explained.

"But I want to keep the motivation high to do the best possible job. And we're bringing quite some steps, change of car lay-out from Imola onwards and we must see how that performs.

"There is one team that's well ahead of everybody else. And then there are three teams with Ferrari, Aston Martin and us that are competing for the rest. And I think we need to beat these two guys, before you can dream about coming back, before you can aim to win a championship. So, this is like a two-way objective."

Formula 1's budget cap is not helping teams that are forced to make wholesale changes, but Wolff acknowledged that "this is what we wanted" and that Aston has shown that huge progress can be made.

"This is what we wanted. We wanted to have a more financially sustainable future, we wanted to have 10 teams that are capable of racing well with the aerodynamic testing restrictions that is advantageous for the ones that are in the back. All of that is to create a very competitive field.

"Where we are today, we just need to acknowledge that one team has done a better job than all the others, then Aston Martin is the next team you need to acknowledge because they've just made a huge giant step forward and it's just down to good work.

"There's no magic and there's not one item on a car that makes it mysteriously fast. It's just solid engineering and all the areas being put together.

"So I think we need to aim for the stars."