Red Bull has started the 2023 season really strongly and their car, called the RB19, is one full second quicker on a lap than any other Formula One car. Despite this strong showing though, Red Bull don’t want to get too confident of winning this year’s competition since their rivals aren’t able to make up that gap at the moment.
Mercedes is trying very hard to make their car better this year, but it might take a while before they can compete with Red Bull. When asked if Mercedes thinks they could beat Red Bull in 2023, their boss Toto Wolff said that it’s not realistic because the gaps between them are too big right now.
Toto Wolff, the Team Principal and CEO of Mercedes-AMG, said that they just wanted to give their best everytime and see what happened next. In the last year, they managed to make improvements to their car even though it was not performing well. Eventually, they won a race, which showed that their goal should be trying to get closer and closer to the competition.
Mercedes is working on a new type of car that won’t be like its old design. They plan on finishing the first version of it for May’s Grand Prix at Imola, Italy and making even better changes later in the year. But Mercedes’ boss believes it may take up to another full year until their cars can go toe-to-toe with Red Bull’s racers.
“Last year it took us about six to twelve months to figure out what was happening with the car. So this means we have to work twice as fast and speed up our development if we want to see smaller steps of progress from Red Bull.”
“We can analyze aircrafts to get some help, but it’s not going to be a huge benefit. To succeed, we need to know exactly what we need to do and be perfect about it. That will make the improvements significant.”
