Toto Wolff says Mercedes' low-key performance in qualifying in Bahrain has led him to finally concede that the concept pursued by the team is flawed and won't allow his outfit to be competitive this season.
George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified respectively P6 and P7 in Saturday's session at Sakhir, a result that will most likely leave both Mercedes' drivers unable to challenge for its usual Red Bull and Ferrari rivals in Sunday's race.
After a troubled campaign in 2022 that yielded but a single win – courtesy of Russell in Brazil last November – Mercedes opted to retain on its 2023 car the zero sidepod concept introduced last season.
But while pre-season testing confirmed that Mercedes' engineers had been able to iron out for good last year's porpoising phenomenon, the team's new-spec car still suffered from balance issues and from excessive drag.
©Mercedes
On Friday, Wolff said that he was confident that Mercedes' W14 was "a car the team can work with". But after qualifying, the Austrian is no longer so sure, as he suggested that it was time to face reality and to accept the fact that Mercedes will not return to its winning ways if it does not change its car's fundamental concept.
"I don't think this package is going to be competitive eventually," a candid Wolff said.
"We gave it our best shot all over the winter, and now we just need to all regroup and sit down with the engineers, who are totally not dogmatic about anything.
"There are no holy cows and we need to decide what is the development direction that we want to pursue, in order to be competitive to win races.
"It's not only like last year, where you are scoring many podiums and eventually you get there.
"I'm sure we can win races this season. But it's really the mid and long term that we need to look at, and which decisions we need to take."
With a crisis meeting on the team's agenda after this weekend's race, Mercedes will need to decide its priorities. But even if the Brackely squad chooses to head into a new direction, it won't write off its 2023 season, Wolff insists.
"We are racers, and we are racing, and we will never give up fighting every single session to be on top," said the Austrian.
"If you look at the pecking order, today, you say, well, it's not realistic. But I'm looking at what can we find next week? What can we add to the car? What is the change of direction that we can implement? And how quickly is that, so that maybe we can turn the ship around this year?
"It's just first qualifying of '23. That's why I don't want to discount anything for this year, while being totally realistic that it [the car] needs a lot to change a lot."
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