‘A bit of a compromise’ - Mercedes F1 upgrades explained 

That is according to Sky Sports F1’s pitlane reporter Ted Kravitz, who has provided his analysis of the six updates Mercedes are debuting this weekend in Monaco as they look to turnaround their fortunes and close the gap to pace-setters Red Bull. 

Mercedes have finally abandoned their ‘zeropod’ philosophy and re-designed their sidepods, marking the headline of a raft of changes made to the W14. 

Other revisions include new front suspension and a new floor. 

“Are these the upgrades that are going to rescue George Russell and Lewis Hamilton’s F1 season?” Kravitz said. 

“My instinct reaction, is that it’s a compromise. It's neither a Red Bull nor an Aston Martin - it’s neither magical nor muggle.

“The most visual change is to the sidepods. The ‘no-pods’ are no more. The slim-down sidepods have gone. 

“Instead we have have these chunky sidepods. But the car is somewhat compromised because they have to keep their side impact structure. It has to stay on the Mercedes because that’s where they had it with the no-pods.

“It’s necessitated quite a big change to the radiator layout inside that. So that’s been quite a lot of work. Impressive, when you look at it. 

"In the wind tunnel these new sidepods have brought performance.

"But the sidepods are not where the performance is. The performance comes from the floor. The floor is new and that's where the downforce is generated. There’s plenty of nice furniture around the floor edges but we can’t really see underneath it. 

“To keep the floor in the perfect attitude, they have redesigned the front suspension with a higher top wishbone and lower leg rear wishbone to have more of the anti-dive properties that we've seen work so well on the RB19.

“So it’s a bit of a compromise. Will it result in big lap time gains? That is the question and answer we are hopefully going to find out.” 

Sky pundit Martin Brundle said Mercedes’ revised W14 has “a touch of Frankenstein about it”. 

“That’s not going to win too many beauty grades is it, that car,” he said. “It’s got a touch of Frankenstein about it. 

“But as the great Ken Tyrrell used to say, if they cross the line first line first [it doesn’t matter]. 

“I imagine Toto and Lewis saying ‘right, keep doing the same thing and we’ll get the same results. Do something. Put something else on it. 

“What the team is saying, in all seriousness, is this will enable us to have a new reference point and move forward from there. 

“Instead of being half-way up a ladder that appears to be going nowhere as we saw in 2022 and so far in 2023, let’s build another ladder that might enable us to climb higher.

“Let’s see how it performs - it might be magical.”