Mercedes to introduce major upgrades at Imola

The Mercedes team will introduce its first major upgrades for the 2023 season during the weekend of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

At Imola at the end of next week, the W14 will feature a new floor, new suspension and aerodynamic changes. The expectation is that with these improvements, Mercedes will abandon its concept of zero air boxes, which it has been betting on since the start of the 2022 season. Despite the expected major changes for the first European race this year, Mercedes has warned its fans not to expect an immediate improvement in the performance of The Black Arrows.

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“If you go back to the test and the race in Bahrain, then we realized that we didn’t have the right package to allow us to challenge for the titles. If we had continued with this direction of development, we would not have reached a position to fight with Red Bull.”

“What we will introduce only the first step at Imola. These things take time to develop in the wind tunnel, it can’t happen overnight. The Imola package is just the beginning of this process. We hope to introduce more improvements later in the year. Our hopes are to improve qualifying and the races of course,” explained Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin.