Why the painful process of Mercedes’ F1 B-spec shift isn’t over yet
Mercedes has abandoned its radical ‘zeropod’ concept and appears to have enjoyed a competitive uplift – or at least, in the words of Toto Wolff, established a ‘new baseline’. JAKE BOXALL-LEGGE considers if this mean the team is now 18 months behind key rivals and whether such a big development push has come at a cost to next year’s car
“I’m of the belief that this car is now a solid baseline. There’s no more talk about changing regulations, raising the floor edges, and the bouncing is a non-existent topic. It is from there now we can seek performance and downforce.”
It’s taken long enough. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has spent the past 18 months enduring the consequences of his team’s single-minded pursuit of a radical, nearly sidepod-less design direction. One of the key questions now is whether the most successful team of the past decade can make up for that lost time.
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