Hamilton given major backing to finally win record F1 title
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff is unwavering in his belief that Lewis Hamilton possesses the capability to secure an unprecedented eighth world championship, provided he has a competitive car.
The historic partnership between Hamilton and Mercedes has yielded remarkable success, marked by six world titles for Hamilton and an impressive eight consecutive constructors’ title triumphs from 2014 to 2021.
Despite recent challenges, including F1’s regulatory reset in 2022 that disadvantaged Mercedes, leading to Red Bull’s dominance in 2023 with 21 wins out of 22 races, Wolff remains optimistic.
Hamilton, who has not clinched a victory in over two years, is gearing up for the 2024 season with renewed determination to overcome these obstacles.
Wolff: Hamilton can get back in front
As the upcoming season approaches, Wolff stressed that Hamilton, the most successful driver in F1 history, is still well-equipped to pursue championship glory, provided he has the right machinery at his disposal.
“Clearly yes, and I emphasise that strongly,” Wolff told La Gazzetta dello Sport if Hamilton can win another F1 world title.
“There is a reason why Lewis has broken all records and won seven world championships: because his skill is on a higher level. If we give him a good car that he can trust, he can get back in front of everyone.”
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Mercedes F1 chief opens up on ‘fate’ of W15 ahead of 2024 launch
Mercedes F1 technical director, James Allison, has admitted that the ‘fate’ of their 2024 challenger, the W15, will depend on the approach and methodology taken by the team before the car is revealed to the public.
Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, along with the rest of the Mercedes team, will be hoping that 2024 brings with it a far more competitive F1 car for them to mount a challenge on reigning champions Red Bull.
The heavyweight rivals have announced that their car launches will be just one day apart, with Mercedes unveiling their W15 24 hours before Red Bull lift the curtain on their own RB20.
Allison is well-accustomed to hearing questions over the design process at Mercedes, especially in the last two seasons, but the team’s technical director has admitted that far more goes on behind the scenes than most will ever realise.
Allison: Mercedes F1 fate depends on our process
“To the mind of a designer or a performance person in F1, concept is actually nothing to do with the car,” he told Sky Sports.
“It’s about a process by which you decide what good looks like, and what bad looks like. It’s your methodology for sort of sieving out all the many, many things you might put on the car and finding only the ones that you really think are going to add lap time, it’s method. The car itself is just the output of that method.
“So when you talk to us about concept, we’re hearing, ‘What, you think our wind-tunnel weighting system wasn’t right?’ And we’ve changed that, or our way of meshing in CFD was wrong and we’ve changed the concept of that.
“That’s what concept means to us and the car just pops out at the far side of that when we apply that process and that concept.
“So, of course the last two years have required us to adjust our approach and our methodology, our concept, if you will, and as a result of that the hardware that pops out the far side of that, will necessarily be different hardware, because it’s defined by different decisions and different weightings of what’s important and what isn’t.
“You get all excited by the end result, but actually our fate is made by the approach.”
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