Will the stripped-back W14 return Mercedes to the front?

When Mercedes’ run of eight consecutive constructors titles came to an end last year, Toto Wolff was adamant his team was not entering a long-term decline.

He said his management team had learnt from the toppling of previously dominant teams, such as Ferrari in the mid-2000s and Red Bull in the early 2010s, and the modern-day Mercedes outfit would not follow the same trajectory. Confident that the problems that had caused Mercedes’ issues in 2022 were now understood, Wolff believed F1 history would ultimately view the team’s 2022 season as a blip rather than a downturn.

Over the next nine months, the validity of that claim will be tested and the outcome will largely rely on the performance of the sleek new Mercedes W14 launched on Wednesday.

Mercedes continues on its own path

With its bare carbon-fibre bodywork and the continuation of Mercedes’ unique slimline sidepod design, the W14 is an attempt to cling on to the baby while pouring out the bathwater. However, as a number of midfield teams — including Mercedes’ engine customers McLaren, Aston Martin and Williams — have flocked in the direction of design concepts pioneered by Red Bull last year, Mercedes’ decision to continue on its own path is looking increasingly bold.

“I don’t believe we’ve ever been a team that copied other people,” Lewis Hamilton said on Wednesday following the launch of the W14. “We’ve always been of our own mind and always been a team that’s incredibly creative and innovative and like to do it our way. I think that’s worked in the past.

“You see some of the cars are converging to what Red Bull, perhaps, will look like, except for Ferrari. Last year we arrived and were like ‘damn our car looks quick’, and then it wasn’t with all the issues we had.

“Now we are coming into another season with a car that’s kind of similar looking in many respects, because a lot of the elements are difficult to change… but you’ve got to have confidence in the engineers, and I do.

“We’re sticking with it, we’re going with it, and I hope when we get in it has the characteristics that we’ve asked for.”

Mercedes is confident it has understood last year’s issues and has long been in a process to methodically rectify them. At the core of the problems was a significant variation between the downforce levels its simulations were showing and the often brutal reality of running the car on track.

In theory,…