Mercedes reveal their W14 upgrade plan for after the summer break

Mark Scott 05 Aug 2023 8:15 AM

The Mercedes W14 passes the grandstand at the Belgian Grand Prix

Mercedes are not completely throwing the towel in with the W14 when the F1 season resumes at Zandvoort late August.

The W14 shares a lot in common with its W13 predecessor, the main similarity being that it has ultimately failed to live up to expectations of putting Mercedes back in the World Championship title battle.

Finishing second is the main aim now for the Silver Arrows, with Aston Martin and Ferrari the main competitors for that spot.

More Mercedes upgrades on the way

And it is this battle for second place which is ensuring that Mercedes are not giving up on their 2023 challenger and turning their full focus to the W15 and the F1 2024 season instead.

Speaking in their post-Belgian Grand Prix debrief, Mercedes chief technical officer Mike Elliott revealed what we can expect from the team during the summer break and the second half of the F1 2023 campaign.

“Well, if we start with the summer break we can’t do very much at all,” Elliott said.

“We are not allowed to by regulation. We are forced to take a two-week break with no development of the cars and I think for most of the factory that is going to be a well-needed break.

“Something that actually helps them in the second half of the season when we need to bring all of that energy, bring all the upgrades we possibly can to the car.

“In terms of what we can expect from the second half of the season we need to keep pushing, we need to keep pushing because we want to learn more about this car so we can take that into the winter and into the development of next year’s car but also we want that fight for second in the championship so we will keep bringing some upgrades to the car, keep fighting for that second position.”

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What are Red Bull upgrade plans?

The mighty Red Bull RB19 catches the eye at pretty much every race, but interest was even higher at the Hungarian Grand Prix when theyunveiled a ‘daring’ new sidepod packagethat made the rest of the paddock stand up and take notice.

But, according to Red Bull team boss Christian Horner, this will be the last major upgrade brought to the RB19 with full attention now on the 2024 car as they look to steal a march on their nearest rivals ahead of the defence of their inevitable World Championship titles.

“I think there’s circuit-specific bits and pieces because we race at Monza, and other circuits like Singapore, they’re all circuit specific,” Horner told Sky F1 when asked about Red Bull’s upgrade plan for the remainder of the season.

“With the limitation with the wind tunnel time that we have, we have to make our choices and so of course we’re having to put a lot of focus into next year now to make sure that we don’t fall behind.

“Because the others, you can see McLaren have made a big step, we’re expecting others to do likewise later in the year, particularly with the extra time they have available to them.”

“With a handicap that we have, we have to really swing our focus over to next year because we have a significant deficit in wind tunnel time compared to our competitors and we have to be very selective in how we use them.

“We’ll have a few circuit-specific things but nothing that hasn’t been done already or committed through the research and development.”

As per the regulations, Red Bull already get the least amount of wind tunnel time as World Champions, but a further 10% reduction came their way as part of the punishment given to them for breaking the cost cap in 2021.