Mercedes, reigning world vice-champion behind the powerful Red Bull, presented on Wednesday a “very different” single-seater for the 2024 Formula 1 season, the last of its star driver Lewis Hamilton, expected at Ferrari next year.
Called W15, the 2024 livery that Hamilton and his fellow Briton George Russell will drive still gives pride of place to black, with more silver, especially on the front.
Mercedes has made “a lot of mechanical changes” to the single-seater, “very different” from its predecessor on a technical level – “not only on the aerodynamic surfaces, but especially underneath” – explained boss Toto Wolff. Changes which, the team hopes, “will result in more performance and more predictability” on the track.
For the eight-time constructors’ world champion, the objective of the season is clear: “consolidate [her] position in relation to Ferrari (3rd in the 2023 championship, editor’s note), McLaren (4th) or even Aston Martin (5th) and to be at the front of this group,” Wolff said during the presentation of the car.
Since 2022, the German manufacturer, so successful in recent years, has struggled to return to the top of the hierarchy. In question, a Mercedes which had difficulty adapting to the technical upheaval which came into force at the start of the 2022 season.
“We had two difficult years (…), but it helped us pull ourselves together and look things in the face,” admitted Hamilton, seven-time world champion, who has not won since the Grand Prix of Saudi Arabia, in December 2021.
The Briton will play his final season with Mercedes this year before joining the ranks of Ferrari. The last few weeks “have been full of emotions”, declared the driver during the presentation of the car. “I arrived here in 2013, eleven years with the team, and I am now entering my 12th year.”
At the beginning of February, the surprise announcement of his departure for Ferrari at the end of the year caused a shock in F1.
Red Bull will be the last team to unveil its 2024 car on Thursday in its workshops in Milton Keynes (England), amid growing speculation about the future of its boss Christian Horner, targeted by an internal investigation.
The F1 championship, which this year will include a record 24 Grands Prix, will resume on March 2 in Bahrain after three days of testing on the Gulf island (February 21-23).