Toto Wolff admits Mercedes must change car design concept

SAKHIR, Bahrain — Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has told his engineers to go back to the drawing board after conceding the team's car concept is not good enough to fight for the title this year.

George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified sixth and seventh for the opening race of the 2023 season in Bahrain, with Russell 0.632s off Max Verstappen's pole position time.

Although Saturday's qualifying session is just the first of 23 this year, the size of the gap indicates the team has made a step backwards relative to its main rivals over the winter.

Since new technical regulations were introduced last year, Mercedes has pursued a unique car concept, featuring distinctive narrow sidepods that no other team on the grid has copied.

After defending the concept throughout 2022 and opting to stick with it at the start of this season, Wolff admits a change will be necessary for the team to consistently fight for victories long term.

«I don't think this package is going to be competitive eventually,» he said. «We gave it our best go over the winter and now we need to regroup, sit down with the engineers, who are totally not dogmatic about anything — there are no holy cows — and decide what is the development direction that we want to pursue in order to be competitive to win races.

»It is not like last year when you score many podiums and eventually you get there, I'm sure that we can win races this season, but it's the mid- and long-term that we need to look at and which decisions we need to make."

Mercedes has plans to modify its bodywork with a major upgrade later in the season, but Wolff said it was unlikely to be enough to close the gap to the front and challenge for the title this year.

«I don't know what is going to