Lewis Hamilton believes Mercedes must not shift focus to next year's car and instead continue to develop the W14 to close the gap to Red Bull. Team Principal Toto Wolff has conceded the Silver Arrows must find a compromise between extracting performance out of the car to challenge for race wins whilst also starting work on next season's machinery. F1 teams usually start to switch their workload to next year's car midway through a season, as they attempt to get a head start on rivals, though most keep one eye on the present to ensure they don't slip down the order. While there are - as yet - no significant regulation changes next year, teams typically aim to fix any inherent problems with their current car and, in turn, iron out those issues for future iterations.
Hamilton: Need to utilise this time to fix W14 problems
Mercedes got off to a poor start to the campaign when encountering the same problems as with its maligned W13 at Bahrain pre-season testing, which translated into the opening races of the season. The team arrived at Monaco having ditched their 'zeropod' concept in favour of a more traditional design as part of a radical upgrade package. Having secured more promising results since, including a double podium at the Spanish Grand Prix, Hamilton told media, including RacingNews365.com : "It wouldn’t be helpful for us to just stop working on this car and focus on next year’s car. "We’ve got to utilise the time we have to track to develop the car that we have and fix those problems. "I’m confident we will get there. It’s just a question of how long that will take."
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