“I don’t think we are limited by the budget ceiling,” assures Toto Wolff
After a season start far from being up to par, Mercedes is going to review the concept of its W14. One could think that the budget cap would be a barrier to the team's ambitions, yet Toto Wolff is not worried about it.
After the race in Bahrain, Toto Wolff assured that Mercedes would review the W14’s design and develop new concepts. Indeed, Lewis Hamilton and George Russell finished fifth and seventh respectively in the first Grand Prix, over 50 seconds behind Max Verstappen, which is far from meeting the set objectives.
Andrew Shovlin, engineering director at Mercedes, also stated on the team’s YouTube channel that a revision of this car would be available in the upcoming races.
Nevertheless, several people, like Damon Hill, the 1996 world champion, are concerned about Mercedes’ situation. Damon Hill, who has become a consultant, does not see how the team could completely redesign their car without exceeding the budget limit. (Link: Damon Hill believes that Mercedes will not be able to completely redesign the W14 without exceeding the budget limit)
However, on his part, Toto Wolff does not believe that money is a problem. « I don’t think we are limited by the budget cap. The budget cap is not so decisive in our situation. We just need to decide which direction we want to go in and allocate all our resources there. We continue to develop a car. The only question is which one. »
We are not going to develop two cars side by side, but we will develop one car and we will decide in the coming days and weeks which car it is.
