Formula 1: Mercedes return to all-black colour scheme for 2023

Mercedes have returned to an all-black colour scheme for a 2023 car that team boss Toto Wolff hopes will “eventually fight at the very front”.

Mercedes are sticking with their ‘no-sidepod design’ but hope to have solved the problems they had last year.

“We are contemplating: ‘Is she fast, have we cured some of the problems?’ And that is a big unknown,” Wolff said.

“But we have the tools to develop the car and hopefully give George [Russell] and Lewis [Hamilton] something that works.”

Hamilton, meanwhile, implied that he was planning to stay in F1 beyond the end of his existing contract, which concludes this year.

He said: “I continue to love racing and that is never going to change. It is part of my DNA and I always believe I can get better.

“I am planning to stay a little bit longer.”

Russell, who was the only Mercedes driver to win a race last year, said: “We are all here to win.”

The black colour scheme was first introduced by Mercedes in 2020 to promote diversity and inclusion – a campaign with which the team supported Hamilton’s push to increase the representation of minorities in motorsport.

Abandoned after two years for a return to Mercedes’ traditional silver, it returns this year to help save weight.

“We were overweight last year,” Wolff said. “This year we have tried to figure out where we can squeeze out every single gram. So now history repeats itself.

“You will see that the car has some raw carbon bits, along with some that are painted matt black.

“Of course, when we changed the livery in 2020, the main driving factor was to support the diversity and equality causes which are always close to our heart. The colour black became part of our DNA at that point, so we are pleased to return to it.”

The no-sidepod concept attracted much attention in 2022 because it was so different from the designs of the two fastest cars of the year, from Red Bull and Ferrari.

Although each took a different approach, both differed from Mercedes in having high bodywork – sidepods – that directed air over them to the rear of the car and featured a lower channel that controlled the crucial airflow to the sides of the floor.

Mercedes, by contrast, pared their sidepods right back to the extent they were almost not there.

It was considered a major engineering achievement to do so when that area of the car handles the cooling, but some engineers believed a large exposed floor area was at the root of the aerodynamic bouncing problem that afflicted Mercedes for much of the year.

There are also active questions in F1 as to whether the no-sidepod concept can ever be as competitive as the Red Bull/Ferrari directions.

Technical director Mike Elliott said the team thought hard about abandoning their design concept and moving to the very different one pioneered by Red Bull, which has been copied by much of the rest of the grid.

Elliott said: “At times last year, we were questioning ourselves and saying: ‘Do we have to tear it all up and start again?’ But you know if you do that, you are going to go backwards. Although we had problems last year, we know there is a lot of goodness in the car.”

He said the front and rear suspension had “completely changed” and that although the bodywork looked similar, it contained “quite significant changes”.

“We’ve looked at the problems we had last year and how best to ensure we solved them,” Elliott said.

Like Ferrari on Tuesday, Mercedes have unveiled a real car, and Hamilton and Russell are due to drive it for the first time at Silverstone on Tuesday. – bbc.com