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Mercedes have just a month to decide whether to back Toto Wolff and Lewis Hamilton’s vision and build a new concept, according to Karun Chandhok. The ex-F1 star claimed teams will sign off on their 2024 designs in April meaning the German squad will have one or two more races to make the final decision.
He told Sky Sports Vodcast: “If I look at the timeline. It’s like building a block of apartments. Think of a cycle of four years for a four-tier apartment block. Mercedes have got to think do we knock down the first two years that we’ve built and build three tiers in the same time everyone else is going to just build the last tier.
“That decision will have to be made now because the architecture, then layout and the concept of the car will be signed off by April for all of the teams. In the next couple of races, they have to make the decision of do they abandon this concept and go with a whole new plan for next year.
“I think Toto is right to feel tense and frustrated because clearly there’s a design team there that’s told him, ‘we’re going to stick with this concept, It’s going to work, we understood what went wrong last year, let’s make it happen.’”
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The British manufacturer struggled at the opening races and overhauled their design for the Spanish Grand Prix in a bid to close up to the frontrunners. Although they continued to lack pace in 2022, the team have now got on top of the system and have surprised everyone by securing a podium in Bahrain.
Chandhok added: “The reality is last year they started the year with a car that wasn’t very good. They put their ego aside. They were willing to throw away the time and effort they’d invested in that and ultimately made the decision for Barcelona to produce a copycat Red Bull.
“It upset a lot of people at Red Bull last year. But it meant they kinda wrote off a lot of last season when they had to understand. When you just copy something, it doesn’t mean you fully understand it… So Red Bull were annoyed by it and are still annoyed by it.
“But, Aston spent last year understanding the philosophy and then they’ve improved on it and they’ve produced this car that’s based on an already strong package last year.”
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