Max Verstappen is out of reach. That’s a thought every team had at the beginning of this year at Bahrain testing. As the season kicked off and races ticked off the calendar, this was a reality every team had to accept. Red Bull and Verstappen are the benchmark this year, and everyone else will only play catch-up. One team that must’ve found this particularly hard to digest is Mercedes. After a shocker of a season in 2022, the Brackley team is no closer to Red Bull than it was last year. Lewis Hamilton saw this coming from a mile away, but his team didn’t. 

By the end of last season, Mercedes did look considerably faster than it did at the start. It even got close to Red Bull. This year, though, that’s not the case. While Red Bull may have been Mercedes’ initial benchmark, reaching that benchmark is now only a dream, let alone surpassing it. At least that’s what a Mercedes key figure said.

Max Verstappen isn’t part of Mercedes’ 2023 goals

With the 2022 regulation changes, Mercedes developed a zero-pod concept for its W13. It thought that concept would give it an edge over its rivals. Unfortunately, the only edge it got over everyone else was the added amount of porpoising. Hamilton told the team it was the wrong concept, but Mercedes built the W14 with the same concept. Spoiler alert! It was the wrong decision, and Mercedes finally accepted its errors and built a revamped W14. Since then, the team has taken small steps toward Red Bull, introducing upgrades every now and then. The next one will come at the US GP this weekend, but it’s with a disclaimer from Technical Director James Allison.

Talking to The Race about a modified floor for the W14 in Austin, Allison said, “Hopefully, it will give us a bit of lap time, always a benefit, but it is mostly a useful thing because it’s a bellwether for whether we’re on the right track [for 2024].” Considering it’s almost the end of the season, teams have shifted focus to their 2024 challengers. But they’re using their 2023 cars to experiment and learn. “In lap time terms, it will be small. Useful, but don’t expect us to have leapt past Max,” added Allison.

The Race gave its take on Mercedes’ situation. They wrote, “‘Leaping past Max’ is something that will have to wait until next year at the very least. The RB19’s dominance—particularly through medium- and high-speed corners, but also through a greater range of circuit types and ride heights than others—puts it and Max Verstappen out of reach unless Red Bull makes a fundamental Singapore-style set-up mistake.” Red Bull, quite uncharacteristically, got it completely wrong in Singapore, allowing other teams to capitalize. But the chances of that happening at the Circuit of The Americas are almost out of the question because of how much it suits the RB19.

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Either way, Mercedes knows 2023 is not its year to catch Red Bull. Its main goal is to finish ahead of Ferrari and make a car capable of fighting Red Bull in 2024. For Hamilton and its own sake, Mercedes should take inspiration from McLaren. 

Mercedes should go the McLaren way to catch Red Bull

The Brackley outfit dominated F1 for seven years. Considering it did that, it would mean its car designs were good enough to beat the entire field. To some extent, that’s one of the reasons it didn’t scrap the W13’s concept altogether. It believed it could improve aspects of it but keep the base design the same. It found out the hard way that it wasn’t the way to go. Despite Hamilton insisting that Mercedes change its design, the team didn’t. The seven-time champion knows the only way things will improve in 2024 is if it’s an entirely new concept. To ensure Mercedes was making the suggested changes, he headed to the factory a few weeks ago.

Discussing this on the F1 Nation Podcast, Damon Hill said, “[Mercedes] have changed their exterior aerodynamics around the body of the car and tried to make progress. But you can only do so much with a car that started off going in one direction. McLaren was very open about having pulled a ripcord at the start of the season, going, ‘We don’t think this is the right way to go. We’ve got another direction to go in.’ The upgrades that have come since Austria have been constantly showing lots of room for improvement. That’s really why they are where they are right now, compared to Mercedes.” 

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Can Mercedes pull off a miraculous turnaround like McLaren did to challenge Max Verstappen in 2024?