Mercedes surprisingly managed to finish P2 in the Constructors’ Championship in 2023 despite the W14’s lack of pace. Sky Sports expert David Croft believes that the only reason why the Silver Arrows managed to do so was because of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell’s prowess. Croft has no doubt that Mercedes are blessed with arguably the strongest driver pairing on the grid.

While speaking on the most recent episode of the Sky Sports F1 podcast, Croft analyzed Mercedes’ performance. He said, “They finished second, but without that driver combination, would they have finished second? No, I don’t think so“.

The 53-year-old believes that the obvious fault that Mercedes made going into 2023 was that they didn’t change the concept of the car despite realizing that they had perhaps made a mistake. Since Mercedes chose to stick with the same concept from 2022, they were always lagging behind in terms of development as compared to the likes of Ferrari and McLaren.

Both Ferrari and McLaren made rapid gains over the course of the 2023 season. While Ferrari lost out to Mercedes because of their inconsistencies in performance, McLaren by midseason arguably had the second fastest car on the grid, only behind Red Bull.

The number of points all three teams scored in the first and second half of the campaign gives a clear reflection of how Mercedes were fortunate to hang onto P2 in the championship. After the first 11 races, Mercedes had scored 247 of their 409 points.

Meanwhile, Ferrari scored 201 of their 406 points in the same duration. As for McLaren, they only managed 103 of their 302 points. This means that the team from Woking scored a whopping 199 points after the summer break alone.

Meanwhile, Ferrari scored 205 points in this time and Mercedes only managed 162. Mercedes’ underperformance left both Russell and Hamilton furious right from the outset of the 2023 season.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell slammed Mercedes

Lewis Hamilton surprisingly slammed Mercedes after the very first race of the 2023 season in Bahrain. After finishing fifth, the Briton shockingly claimed that the Silver Arrows never took his concerns seriously.

Since the 38-year-old was annoyed with Mercedes, he wanted them to own up and acknowledge that they made a mistake by not listening to his advice. Following the race in Bahrain, Hamilton also claimed that he knew Mercedes had made a mistake with the W14 after the very first moment he stepped into the car.

He explained how there were still problems with driveability and how the W14 lacked pace compared to Mercedes’ rivals. Similarly to Hamilton, George Russell also expressed his frustrations with the W14 after the race in Bahrain. While speaking to Sky Sports (as quoted by planetf1.com), Russell said,

“I think it’s been clear where we went wrong over the winter. I think we probably overshot with the W13 in terms of the aggressiveness of the car and the bouncing that we faced, and then we probably overshot in the opposite direction with W14 and compromised too much performance with no bouncing and clearly the lap time isn’t there“.

A few races after Hamilton and Russell expressed their frustrations, Toto Wolff too acknowledged how Mercedes chose the wrong path. The Austrian stated (as quoted by si.com) how the W14 has no “sweet spot“. The 51-year-old stated that since the W14 has been so difficult to drive, it can easily hurt a racer’s confidence.

Since Mercedes had a disappointing 2023 season, Wolff has revealed that they will have an entirely new concept for their 2024 car. He believes that changing the car completely, wherever they can, will help his team to take the fight to Red Bull in 2024.