Mercedes reveals launch date for W14 Silver Arrow

Mercedes' 2023 car which it hopes will steer the Brackley squad back to the top of the field will break cover on February 15.

Mercedes will roll out its W14 E Performance, which it says was "forged from the challenges of the testing 2022 campaign", during a live digital launch event at Silverstone.

"The 2023 car builds on the lessons learned from last year, which forced the Team to confront and overcome numerous challenges with the W13," commented Mercedes.

"The progress enabled by the efforts and determination of everyone at Brackley and Brixworth helped achieve stronger results from mid-season onwards, culminating in a 1-2 finish at the São Paulo Grand Prix."

After dominating F1 for eight years, Mercedes came close to concluding its 2022 campaign without a single winner's trophy to add to its impressive array of silverware.

Fortunately, George Russell saved the team's honour by winning F1's penultimate round in Brazil.

Mercedes' engineers worked tirelessly during the 2022 season to understand and then solve the chronic porpoising issues embedded in the new-generation car's ground-effect design, an effort that also forced the team to upgrade its design tools during the year.

• Read also: Russell sees nothing stopping Mercedes bidding for 2023 title

According to Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff, the Brackley squad's W14 silver arrow, despite its resemblance with its predecessor, will be "full of surprises".

"The last time I saw it I thought ‘oh this looks the same [as the W13]’ but here’s hoping it’s not the same.

"I’m pretty much like you, I go into the wind tunnel and it looks like this year’s car but they say to me it’s very different underneath.

"It’s about the airflow, it’s about the weight distribution, it’s about the aero map.

"I think we have a much better understanding of what the problems were," explained the Austrian.

"We’ve been peeling only a layer of the onion, layers of discovering more issues and more problems, but I think we’ve come to the point that we understand pretty well why the car is not performing.

"The correlation at least is there for some tracks so it’s all in the fine detail of how can we make the car work out aerodynamically, how can we improve the ride and make it more fun?

"I think if we’re able to solve that over the winter, at least we can provide a stable platform to the drivers and we can develop it from there."

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