In his 17th Formula 1 season, Lewis Hamilton will dare a new attack on the long-awaited eighth world title to become the sole title record holder in the premier class. However, after last season’s disappointment, Mercedes are trying a different approach in 2023, Hamilton reveals.
“[Vor dem Start der Saison 2022] I was optimistic because our people were optimistic,” he says. “We had big upgrades ahead of us, and I thought, ‘Right, we’re going to hit hard!’. But of course it was a shock for all of us [was mit dem Auto passiert ist]. I think everyone is a lot more grounded this year.”
“It’s more like the motto: We might not be the fastest right away, but we have the potential to be close.” Hopefully it will be close and hopefully we have the potential to close the gap early in the season.”
Wolff: “Don’t think we can go straight away”
After the difficult start of the 2022 season, the Brit has scaled back his expectations for the new season: “I wouldn’t say I’m as optimistic as I was last year. I would say I’m just more cautious. I know that we don’t care whatever comes our way, have the best team to deal with whatever comes our way.”
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff blows the same pipe when asked about the prospects for 2023: “I think [optimistisch] is perhaps saying too much, because here we are trying to continue to be what we have always been, namely skeptical and humble. So I don’t think we can start right away.”
“At least that’s our mindset. But of course we learned a lot last year and I think we’ll apply that to the car. The performance that we had in the car [freimachen] can.”
Hamilton: “Greatest trust” in Mercedes employees
At the same time, Hamilton emphasizes that he continues to have complete confidence in his team because “you don’t lose the ability to win world championships overnight.” “So it’s no coincidence that we’ve won world championships in the past.”
“I have the utmost trust in the people I deal with,” adds Hamilton. “The factory is getting bigger and bigger, there are more and more departments, and more and more people are joining them. So it’s always difficult to keep track of things.”
“But when I’m sitting in the office, which I’ve been coming to for eleven years now, we all say, ‘Man, it’s been a long time!’, but everyone’s still looking forward to working together. It doesn’t feel old, it does still fresh.”
Which two things Hamilton wants to take away from 2022
Although Mercedes initially seems to have stuck to the extremely narrow sidepod design, Hamilton explains that the Mercedes engineers have completely renewed the W14 compared to its predecessor and that the 2023 car should at best have different characteristics.
“Pretty much everything, so every element from the tip of the rear end to the tip of the front end. It’s mostly about how the car behaves. And last year’s car didn’t behave like a race car should. And That robbed the drivers of their confidence.”
“So throughout the year we’ve been going through the things that we wanted to change. And we think we’ve tackled those things. But once we’re in the car, we’ll know exactly how far we’ve tackled them are and whether there is still more to be done,” says Hamilton.
“The only thing we wanted to keep is our long run pace because that was really strong last year, I think our race pace has always been stronger. So that’s the only element that we really want to keep this season and that too Reliability. But everything else we really want to reinvent, redesign and hopefully we’ll see a more efficient car.”