The Mercedes-AMG Petronas team seems to have suffered a setback, ahead of the opening series of F1 Bahrain 2023 this weekend.
Instead of catching up with Red Bull and Ferrari, which are the main rivals, Mercedes has slumped further in F1 Bahrain 2023.
As quoted from GridOto.com, Mercedes, which previously ranked third in F1 2022, also received a threat from the Aston Martin Cognizant team.
Aston Martin, which adopted part of the Red Bull car design, managed to perform well since the pre-season test until the first day of F1 Bahrain 2023 on Friday (3/3) yesterday.
Even Fernando Alonso managed to record the fastest time in FP2 F1 Bahrain 2023, while Mercedes only struggled in the middle.
Apart from Aston Martin, some teams also copied some parts of the Red Bull car design, some also with the Ferrari car design.
However, not a single team has copied Mercedes with their zeropod concept.
It should be obvious, Mercedes should immediately admit that the design of the W14 car has failed miserably and start changing the concept.
Unfortunately, that wasn't an option for the Silver Arrow team, who still believed the concept was good enough to explore further.
"The big thing is that we've got rid of the bounce of the car, so we can point the car in the direction we want. It's still smoother than last year," said Mercedes' Trackside Engineering Director, Andrew Shovlin, as reported by GridOto.com from PlanetF1.
"We are still working on the balance of the car, we haven't achieved what we needed during the three days of testing, so we need to work more," he explained.
Shovlin also firmly rejected his team copying the concept of Red Bull or Ferrari.
"Our sidepod is still the same theme, if you leave it behind and copy someone else's, you're going backwards before you can go forwards," Shovlin says again.
"The big focus for us is to add performance and eliminate bounce," he concluded.
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