LEWIS HAMILTON’S Mercedes are planning radical changes to their car after just ONE race in the Formula One season.
Seven-time F1 world champion Hamilton started the campaign in disappointing fashion nine days ago.
The 38-year-old could only finish sixth in Bahrain as rival Max Verstappen romped to victory for Red Bull.
Mercedes already had concerns about their W14 design, which is an evolved version of their “no-sidepod” one from last season which caused numerous issues as the team missed out on an eighth-consecutive constructors' championships.
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff wants his development team to reproduce a “radical” new design following the “worst weekend of racing” at the Sakhir Circuit.
And he added that they needed to be bold with future updates, amid questions over their “zero sidepod” design.
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Now Trackside Engineering Director Andrew Shovlin opened up about what’s next during an interview Formula1.com.
He said: “People have tended to use the word ‘concept’ when they mean the sidepod design, and Toto had said recently that we are looking at a revision that is going to come along in the next few races anyway.
“Given the gap to the front, of course we are going to look at bigger departures and more radical changes. But those changes take time to turn into a faster solution in the wind tunnel – you can’t do them overnight.
“There is quite a lot of development that you’ve got to do around any sort of big change in geometry in that area.
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“Of course, we are looking at where we can improve the car, we are looking for potential to develop and you will see visible changes coming on the car over the next few races.”
Shovlin also highlighted significant tyre degradation as a major concern after Bahrain as well as the car’s general lack pace.
He added: “Ultimately, we’ve got a lot of work to do. That gap in qualifying was quite large; we were over half a second to the front. In the race that was even bigger.
“That was compounded by the fact that when you get the tyre degradation, you get a bit more sliding, the tyres run hotter, and you end up finding it very difficult to keep them under any kind of control.
“There is a lot that we need to understand but the key things are really getting on top of that long run degradation, which last year was a strong point for us.
“Clearly, we’ve got something that’s not in the right place that we need to work on, but ultimately the other thing is that performance gap to the front. The raw pace of the car is not good enough.
“We are working very hard at the moment to understand what we can do in the short-term future and in the mid-term future to try and get ourselves in a better place.”
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