After a disappointing season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, Merce🌌des have decided to pursue a new car concept after realising the development route they went down withꦚ their W14 wasn’t the right one.

Lewis Hamilton finished over 50 seconds behind dominant race winner 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Max Verstappen, and was beaten by Aston Martin’s 168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史:Fernando Alonso and Ferrari’s168澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果历史: Carlos Sainz.

Unlike in previous years, Mercedes🍨 - and the other nine F1 teams -  are limited by the amount of development and parts they can do during a season due to the cost cap.

As a result, Wolff has confirmed Mercedes won't intꦺroduce an entirely nꦛew chassis, instead they will be focusing on the aerodynamic flow and bodywork of the car.

“No, it’s out of question that you change a chassis because simply there’s not enough budget in the cost cap,” he said. “Changing 🙈t🌜he way the aero works, the bodywork, it’s perfectly in scope."

With Mercedes altering their development route for this year, Wolff conceded that it might be a c🃏ase of ‘taking a step back before ma♏king two forward’.

“I think the budget cap iꦯn a way has more positives than negatives, but obviously if you’re on the backfoot like we are at the moment it doesn’t allow you to build a second chassis," he explained. 𒀰;

“I think our fundamental problem is not building a second chassis or throwing stuff at the car, it’s more about the direction that we have taken iꦍs wrong and I think when we change it now that’s going to be limited by the budget cap but not in the way that you would expect like we’re not able to develop. 

“We’re still able to develop but it will mean we need to spend time on a new concept, on new ideas rather than discontinue the old one. In the short term it could mean y💙ou take a step back before making two forward. These are the rules.”

“We were misguided by the data”

It seems that Mercedes’ steady improvements through 2022𒈔, ultimately winning a 🦹race in 2022, gave them false hope that their design concept was good enough to take the fight to Red Bull and Ferrari.

Customer team Aston Martin have made significant gains over th🀅e winter, adopting a Red Bull-style philosophy.

Ferrari, who did struggle for race pace in Bahraᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ⁤⁤⁤⁤ᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚin, moved towa♍rds Red Bull in terms of focusing on aero efficiency and thus straight-line-speed, while Mercedes remain the outlier with their general car design.

Explaining furtꦗher their decision to ditch their current car’s philosophy, Wolff revealed that the team were “misguided” by the data and their various simulation tools.

• Wolff: "No ✱grouch" if Hamilton looks elsewhere if Merc n🗹ot winning in a year

"I think we really tried hard to make it work beca𝓀use the data that we have extrapolated showed us that this work,” Wolff added. “We w🅠ere proven wrong very simply. 

"You can see that the two quickest cars, including the Ferrari, the three quickest cars, that have a similar concept of how they generate performance and that’s very different to ours. At a certain stage we came to the conclusion we got this wrong - simply - we got it wrong. Why we 🐈got it wrong? 

“We are still analysing because we followed the data and followed what the simulations told us but in this case we were misguided by the data. All of ꦿus involved in the decision making processꦏ came to the conclusion that we can’t continue that way. We really tried to stick to it.”