Wolff: No unrest around James Vowles departure

Williams announced back in January, that they were replacing departed boss Jost Capito by James Vowles who left his role at Mercedes for his big break in Formula 1 at the Grove-based outfit. But Red Bull Consultant, Dr. Helmut Marko, claimed "the mood at Mercedes is tense" following the departure of Vowles who he also claimed "took good engineers with him" before heading to Williams.

However, speaking at the launch of Mercedes' 2023 F1 car, the W14, Toto Wolff denied any unrest at Brackley following Vowles' exit.

"There is no unrest at all around James Vowles departure," the Austrian insisted. "We already implemented a really good succession plan a year ago. James hasn't been sitting on the pit wall for the last six months.

"I'm proud that we have someone in our team who can make a move like this," he added. "I know we have the depth in our structure and the know-how to replace James. That's a positive."

Wolff was quizzed as to why confidence in a Mercedes come back in 2023 comes from; he responded: "I think "Confidence" is perhaps too much to say.

"We are trying to continue to be there where we have always been. I don't think we can go straight from the start to the goal. At least that's our mindset. Sceptical and modest. But of course we learned a lot last year. To be able to unlock the performance that we had in the car, we will transfer that to the car.

"We'll see, we'll drive the first time in 15 minutes, then we'll get the first feedback. Then we have to use the three days really well," Wolff maintained referring to the W14's shakedown and Bahrain's pre-season testing on February 23-25.

Mercedes had a nightmare of a season in 2022, with their radical W13 with its "zeropod" design turning out to be a major flop, and despite some improvement towards the end of that season, with George Russell even winning the 2022 Sao Paulo Grand Prix, the 2022 campaign was a failure in Mercedes standard.

"I think it's important to be bold in the sport. I'm still proud of the solutions that were put in the car last year," Wolff insisted, as the W14 seems to be following the same concepts of it predecessor.

"Our sidepod design is not something that we believe was fundamentally the reason why we didn't perform. There is no holy cows in our concept. It's not that we don't want to follow anybody's ideas. We kept staying you could well see some development from now on, with the narrow sidepod.

"That could be coming with the upgrades and the sidepods will change. Not very soon, but we are we're looking at solutions. But as we judge it's not a core fundamental performance part," the Mercedes boss revealed.

Mercedes finished the 2022 F1 season third in the Constructors' Championship behind second-placed Ferrari and Champions Red Bull.

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Additional reporting by Agnes Carlier

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