Mercedes Formula 1 boss Toto Wolff has been taciturn on Red Bull’s decision to incorporate previous design solutions from the German marque into its 2024 car.
Red Bull provided a shock last week when it launched an RB20 challenger that featured notable changes from its predecessor, which won all but one of the 22 races last season.
The Austrian outfit now has a vertical inlet on the sidepods reminiscent of the ‘zeropod’ solution that Mercedes abandoned and a prominent gulley along the engine cover.
Mercedes had attempted to make a slim sidepod configuration work previously in the ground effect era but ditched the concept after failing to unlock the potential on track it had seen from its wind tunnel simulations.
Red Bull’s choice to construct elements that its rivals opted to scrap has come as a surprise amid the competition converging upon the reigning champion’s prior designs.
However, Wolff suggests that it wouldn’t be an embarrassment if Red Bull made the venture work and backed the team’s plan to commit to a revamp with its W15 charger.
Asked to provide the thoughts of Mercedes’ engineers on Red Bull’s innovations, Wolff said: “You know the truth is, you don’t know.
“Every team follows their own development direction, trying to generate lap time in the virtual world in simulations and at a wind tunnel. And they are going to put that on the car, no matter what other teams do.
“We have gone back from our zeropod concept and some other features, because we felt it didn’t help the car’s performance. And that’s why we’ve gone, what looks at first slightly more conventional from the bodywork, but we believe it is a better platform.”
Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner had claimed that he anticipated several other teams’ cars this season would resemble the all-conquering RB19 machine from 2023.
But Horner’s opposite number at Ferrari, Frederic Vasseur, has downplayed the Italian marque’s overhaul being targeted at solely replicating what Red Bull has achieved.
“I think it’s not a matter of copying someone or another team is that more time you are spending into the wind tunnel, more you are taking the car and for sure we have two or three years we’ll have a kind of convergence,” Vasseur explained.
“But at the end of the day it’s not that we are copying someone if you are starting to copy you will be always late and always one step behind.”
Mercedes has pressed ahead with a revised concept for 2024 as it endeavours to provide both drivers with a more compliant car compared to its recent troubled creations.
“The mood in the camp is positive,” Wolff added. “I think we had a car that was a handful and difficult to understand sometimes why it was doing what it was doing.
“I think that has been the emphasis for this season to have a stable platform from which we can actually develop onwards. And let’s see if we have that.”
Pressed on whether he had seen enough from the W15 over the opening morning to confirm that, Wolff answered: “It’s very difficult to say. We’ve had a filming day yesterday and then, you know, some aero running this morning with no relevant lap times. But so far, the feedback from the drivers was, yeah, this is something we can start to work with and that is encouraging.”
