Lewis Hamilton has expressed confidence that Mercedes will be in a stronger position next season after their recent struggles, though admits “I’m not going to hold my breath” until the team’s new car hits the track.
Mercedes made a sublime start to F1’s turbo-hybrid era in 2014, stringing together eight consecutive constructors’ championships and seven drivers’ titles – six for Hamilton and one for former team mate Nico Rosberg.
The Silver Arrows were, however, put out of their misery by a new ground effect ruleset that was adopted for 2022 after a risky “zero-sidepod” strategy proved ineffective and was ultimately abandoned in favor of a more traditional design.
Despite that shift, the team has only won once in the last two years as Red Bull has supplanted them at the top of the field with two consecutive double title-winning campaigns.
However, Hamilton expressed his optimism that Mercedes can quickly return to their best in an end-of-season interview with BBC Sport, saying: “I do believe we have a North Star now, which I don’t think we’ve had for two years.”
“But still getting there is not a straight line. And 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.
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“If you look at the Red Bull – andthey have done an amazing job – from Bahrain last year, they had a bouncing issue and they fixed it that week. And then you can imagine, if you’re trying to build a wall, they are one brick after the other, just development, development, development.
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“Maybe they added something and it didn’t add performance. But they were still building. Whereas for us, we had to knock down the wall, if you like, in terms of aero.
“We had a lot of aero on that first car last year. We had to basically knock a ton of downforce off it and then slowly try to add. But every time we tried to add, it was worse. So, we just didn’t improve for a long, long, long time.”
