FEBRUARY 14, 2024

Mercedes unveils W15

The Mercedes Formula 1 team showed its 2024 challenger before testing in Bahrain next week.

Lewis Hamilton said, The learnings of the past two years have helped us find our direction. It's enabled us to find our north star. It's still going to be a work in progress, but we will face whatever challenges present themselves with our heads up, with open minds, and work through diligently.

George Russell said, We've learnt and grown as a team over the past two seasons. It's not been plain sailing, but I truly believe the journey we've been on will make us stronger in the long run. The whole team has been working incredibly hard and we hope to have made a step with the W15.

Team principal Toto Wolff said, We know we have a mountain to climb to fight at the very front. There are no miracles in this sport. But our ambition and determination are strong. Since charting this new course, development has progressed well. We had several items on our priority list for this car. We will soon see if we've made the step we've aimed for.

Technical Director James Allison said, The design of any car is an iterative process. And a long one at that. It stretches back to last year. A new car enables the team to make bigger alterations that are not possible during the season. These are decisions that are taken during the preceding summer.

A big focus has been on improving the previous car's unpredictable rear axle. We have worked hard to ensure that both axles, but particularly the rear axle, retain better control of the tyre than on the W14. There's also been some housekeeping on areas in which we had room for improvement, including the DRS effect, and pit stop performance.

With this current generation of cars, so much of the performance comes from how the floor interacts with the road. Whether or not a car is effective is down to how well that floor is permitted to behave aerodynamically.

We feel like we have had a good winter, but F1 is a relative game and only time will tell how big a step we've made. We're focused on getting the most from the car we launch, but we are excited by the development race that will follow as the regulations are still young and opportunities abound,