© LAT Images for Mercedes-Benz Grand Prix Ltd
Mercedes’ Chief Technical Officer Mike Elliott says “fundamentally, we want to be winning world championships, I think that’s our prime focus and we’ll put our efforts into doing that”.
In 2022 Mercedes suffered from numerous issues, the biggest of which was the ‘porpoising’, and it forced the team to increase their car’s ride height.
However since the W13 had to run very close to the ground to produce enough downforce, increasing the ride height also slowed the car down significantly.
Mercedes’ Technical Director James Allison explains how this changed the team’s approach going into 2023.
“Although we made great strides last year, 2023 presented all the Teams with a rule change that offered some protection against bouncing,” Allison said.
“Over the winter we faced a choice. Go aggressive and trade the bouncing protection in the rule change for performance, or take a more cautious route and steer clear of the sort of porpoising that wrecked our season last year.
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“We chose the cautious path, knowing that it would be less painful to correct if we were wrong. The story of our year so far has been mostly about finding out that we had been too cautious and making the changes to correct that.”
Mercedes’ Chief Technical Officer Mike Elliott was asked if the team ultimately managed to pinpoint the ride height sweet spot.
“The real difficulty is, if you look at the aero testing restrictions, you’ve got so limited a number of runs, and you’ve got to pick a direction and go for it,” Elliott explained.
“If you go down the route of saying I want to develop a car for high ride height or low ride height, and I want to be able to cover all my bases, then suddenly you’d be doing like three runs a week on each one and going nowhere.
“So, you have to sort of pick a direction and go in it. Then, as you learn, you can tweak that direction and move it slightly. I like to think we’ve sort of gotten ourselves into the right place for the winter.”
Elliott added Mercedes is now focusing on their 2024 car, but will still continue to work on the current car.
“I think there’s still learning we can do, and there’s still P2 to fight for in the championship. We’ll keep developing, but obviously our prime focus now is next year’s car.
“Fundamentally, we want to be winning world championships, I think that’s our prime focus and we’ll put our efforts into doing that.
“I think when you look at trying to develop a brand-new car, when you’re making architectural changes, it’s hard to sort of keep that pace in the tunnel.
“So, in actual fact, some of the running we’re doing for this year’s car is just helpful learning and it’s helpful learning at the track, without really hindering next year’s car,” the Briton concluded.
