David Coulthard on Toto Wolff’s ‘brutal’ W14 F1 car verdict: “A big kick in the whatnots"
Mercedes opted to persist with their radical ‘zero pod’ approach this season instead of following the grid’s convergence to a sidepod concept similar to Red Bull’s.&𓂃nbsp;
But before the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix had even taken place, Wolff admitted Mercedes will have to168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: abandon their design and co༺me up with something new in order to get back to winnꦜing ways in F1.
“I think it was brutal,” Coulthard, who is a Red Bull 🎐ambassadoꦰr, told Channel 4 after the season opener.
“This car has only been alive for six days, a few days of testing, three days here. I don’t know where he’s coming from with thatꦰ.
“But yeah, they’ve got a completely different strat💛egy with the sidepods. They clearly have to try and follow the pack now. But that is like a big kick in the whatnots for [the] design t🐎eam.”
168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Lewis Hamilton took fifth in Bahrain but finished almost a minute behind168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Max Verstappen’s dominant Red Bull, while he was also beaten by168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Fernando Alonso’s Aston Martin - ♑which uses the same Mercedes power unꦍit as the W14.
It followed a disappointing qualifying in which Hamilton and teammate168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: George Russell ended up over six-tenths adrift of Verstappen in one-lap pace, ♋which led to Wolff agreeing with Hamilton’s damning assessment of the W14.
"I🌸 don't think that this package is going to be competitive eventually,” he🐻 conceded.
"We gave it our best go oveꦑr the winter and now we all just need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, be totally non-dogmatic and ask what is the development direction we want to pursue in order to be able to win races.
"We hit our targets. That's why I say we gave it our best shot. But the momen♛t comes when the stopwatch comes out and that showed us that we are not good enough.
"At this team we blame the problem not the person. I have responsibilities. I ൲need to fire myself if I want to do something.
"We got it wrong last year. We thought we could fix it byꦅ sticking to the concept of car but it didn't work out. So we just need to switch our focus on to what we believe is the right direction."
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