Lewis Hamilton has stated that Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff and his team are experiencing significant pressure to deliver a competitive Formula 1 car for the 2024 season.
Following a season without victories, the Brackley-based Mercedes team is banking on a completely new car design for their 2024 W15 contender to make a strong comeback.
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Lewis Hamilton, a seven-time world champion, has emphasised the critical nature of Mercedes not repeating past errors in the new ground effect era of Formula 1. This situation has notably increased the pressure on the team and its leader, Toto Wolff.
During a press session with various media outlets, including Motorsport.com, Hamilton expressed that everyone within the Mercedes team is acutely aware of the importance of this upcoming winter. The period is crucial for ensuring that the 2024 car is up to par in terms of competitiveness.
When questioned about the level of pressure on team boss Toto Wolff, Hamilton commented:
“A huge amount for sure. Not just Toto but globally, all of us. Everyone back at the factory, a huge amount of pressure on them. “A huge amount for sure. Not just Toto but globally, all of us. Everyone back at the factory, a huge amount of pressure on them.
“Ultimately, as a boss like Toto, you have to start leaning on people more rather than backing off on them. And how you do that is not easy, as people break at a certain point.
“So how do you do it in a constructive way, in a way that’s inspiring them to continue?
“For me, hopefully some of the race results and drives that I’ve been able to put in, I like to think that sparks inspiration for the guys: like ‘oh we’re almost there’, and that trickles down through the whole system.”
Hamilton recognised that over the last two seasons, Mercedes has faced challenges in establishing a clear development path for its car, noting the lack of a definitive direction in its progress.
“We didn’t have a North Star necessarily at the beginning of the year, knowing exactly where we needed to work towards,” he said.
“And it’s been kind of a zigzag line trying to frickin’ get to where we need to be. Every now and then something positive happens, you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s it.’ And then it shifts, so the goalpost is always moving, which is typical.”
Nevertheless, following this year’s changes in infrastructure, which saw the reinstatement of James Allison in a leading technical role and a revamp of the car concept, Hamilton feels considerably more optimistic.
“Yes, I do believe we have a North Star now, which I don’t think we’ve had for two years,” he said. “But still getting there is not a straight line.
“There were just certain things, decisions that have been made, that just left you blocked at the end of a road, and you can’t do anything, because of the cost cap and all these different things.
“If you look at the Red Bull, and they’ve done an amazing job, but from Bahrain last year, they had a bouncing issue and fixed it that week.
“It is like if you’re trying to build a wall. It was one brick after the other: brick, brick, brick. Just development, development, development.
“Maybe they added something, and it didn’t add performance, but they were still building.
“For us, we had to knock down the wall. We had a lot of aero on that first car last year, but we had to basically knock a ton of downforce off it and then slowly tried to add it. But every time we tried to add it, it was worse. We just didn’t improve for a long, long, long time.
“So, you can imagine they [Red Bull] are progressing. And we’re going like this [he indicated a near flat line] Then eventually, it’s slowly coming up while they’re continuing.
“That gap… We are just on massively different trajectories. But I think we understand the car so much better now. We have developed great tools in the background.
“So naturally, I’m hopeful. But I’m not going to hold my breath.”
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