17 February 2023 , 22:16
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Pre-season testing will not provide enough time on track for Mercedes to identify any major issues with their new car, according to their concerned technical director.
Mike Elliott and his team spent much of last year putting out fires and fixing issues on the W13, such as the porpoising problem which was destroying their season – and Lewis Hamilton's back.
The Silver Arrows – back in black for 2023 – will be desperate to avoid a repeat performance. But the W14 did not exactly get off to an auspicious start as it hit the Silverstone track for a demo run earlier this week, with a few "niggles" cropping up.
A shakedown the following day was more "smooth", the team reported, but still there will be some nervousness. Pre-season testing in Bahrain next week may throw up some more curveballs that Mercedes will at least be grateful to be aware of.
However, Elliott feels that, with just three days of running scheduled before the competitive action starts this year, there may be some gremlins lurking in the background which may not pop up until after the season has already begun.
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"We never really got on top of the car balance last year," he said. "All the normal work we do at the beginning of the season didn't happen because of the problems we were trying to rectify. With only three days of testing this year, that has two big impacts.
Lewis Hamilton will hope to have a more competitive car this year (LAT Images/Mercedes F1 Team)The first is in reliability – if we are not reliable in the test, then we will have very limited mileage to learn. We also won't be able to measure the car's absolute reliability too much, because over three days you are not going to get huge amounts of running. These cars are now so reliable that you need more mileage than three days to really start seeing some of the issues.
"The second big impact is that we've got to use our limited time as efficiently as possible. We've got to learn as much as we can, to work out how to get the most performance out of the car and what we can learn to feed into the next developments."
But, on a more positive note, he later added: "As we develop the car throughout the winter, we test as much as we can on rigs. We do everything we can to make sure that the car is reliable, and that the performance we expect is measured as best as we can."