Damon Hill believes that Mercedes should not – and will not be able to – completely revise the concept of the W14

For Mercedes, the Bahrain Grand Prix was quite complicated. Their drivers qualified in 6th and 7th positions, behind the two Ferrari drivers and Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin. During the race, despite a good start, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were overtaken by Fernando Alonso in a fair manner. It’s ironic considering that Aston Martin is equipped with the same Mercedes engine, the AMR23, as the eight-time world champion team. The Silverstone team even secured a podium finish, while Hamilton finished 5th and Russell lost his duel against Lance Stroll in the other Aston Martin.

The two Mercedes finally finished with over 50 seconds of delay behind the winner Verstappen, while the Red Bull did not push to the limit. Toto Wolff described the race as one of the worst days. Mercedes gave its best and now we need to sit down with the engineers.

A humiliating situation for Damon Hill.

Damon Hill (1996 world champion) declared on Sky Sports that Mercedes’ situation is humiliating: Poor Lewis and George Russell. I mean, it was a race that Toto described as his worst day in motorsport. They were humiliated. They were beaten by a customer.

Furthermore, Damon Hill believes that it seems a bit early to abandon the current concept of the W14. According to the former driver, it would be better to reassess what is wrong with the concept and adapt to it. The problem is that they came out with this car that was very different from the others last year. And the question was, “Why is everyone going in a different direction?”. Throughout the year, they persisted with the car that had a porpoising issue. They had a lot of difficulties trying to solve this problem. There may be something wrong with the direction they took, and if that’s the case, they have a real problem.

The limited budget imposed in F1 is blocking Mercedes.

Mercedes is facing a big problem. Formula 1 has been operating under a budget cap since 2021, which means the team can’t just throw money at the problem. As Damon Hill explains, with the cost cap, they can’t just go back to the factory and spend a lot of money. Redesigning a car also means they have to let go of what they think they know and then follow others who have gone in a different direction. They don’t have information on all of this, they don’t have knowledge from the wind tunnel. So now there’s a small problem for Mercedes. It could focus on what it has and prove everyone wrong with its design.

The British consultant explains that Mercedes probably believed that the gap wasn’t so significant to catch up to Red Bull, yet after this first race of the season, it is clear that they have to face reality.

« They are now faced with reality because in the tests, you can still believe that you are close. It was only in the final moments of the qualification that we saw the real performance gap. With a race ending with a huge gap and restrictions, now they no longer have the same ability to invest resources and create a new development program. »

For Hill, the gap is such that the German team must double their efforts to hope to catch up with Red Bull. They will have to go twice as fast as their competitors to make up for the delay, and that’s the nature of development in Formula 1. They know that the task ahead is enormous, that everything must be done at the factory, and that they will really have to be inspired or work twice as hard to come back. Without even taking into account the potential for improvement of Red Bull.