Still targeting that elusive eighth world championship, Formula 1’s most bankable star opens up about how he’s driving his Mercedes team to get back to the front…
WORDS MATT KEW PORTRAIT JAMES SUTTON/MOTORSPORT IMAGES
You were happy to see the back of 2023 and the Mercedes W14. But there must have been some positives from the season that you’ve held onto.
There’s been a few. Getting pole position in Budapest – we didn’t think that was going to be possible when I first drove the car. The upgrade in Austin and the fact that given a couple more laps, we may have been in shooting range for a win. Just seeing that we were slowly morphing the car into a more competitive machine. It was more and more enjoyable to drive, fighting in a position where you’re actually going forwards rather than backwards.
But it still fundamentally was not the winning car. That’s what we’ve got to change. The dream is to make sure that when we start this year, it’s not a replica. But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be the case.
Toto Wolff says every component has changed to create the W15. Can starting from scratch take you close to Red Bull given it’s had two years to develop its concept?
It’s not as easy as that. You have to try and take the good parts and, through trial and error, try to add other parts. But you can imagine Red Bull are also nervous of making too big a change and it being the wrong one. We need to be, consistently, week-on-week, adding performance. We have higher targets than ever before because we have a massive gap to catch. That makes it really tricky. I do believe we have a North Star now, which I don’t think we’ve had for two years. But still, getting there is not a straight line. But I think we understand the car so much better now. We’ve developed great tools in the background. Naturally, I’m hopeful, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
Just how much pressure is there on Mercedes to get it right in 2024?
A huge amount. Ultimately, as a boss like Toto, you have to start leaning on people more rather than backing off on them. How you do that is not easy, as people break at a certain point. So how do you do it in a constructive way, in a way that’s inspiring them to continue?
For me, hopefully some of the race results and drives that I’ve been able to put in, I like to think that sparks inspiration for the guys, like “Oh, we’re almost there”. That trickles down through the whole system like “Oh, he’s still got it. If we work
