It has arguably become clear that the zero sidepod concept adopted by Mercedes has proven to be more of a headache for the team than an outlying success. In the last 12 months they have achieved only one race win, while they still have 16 podiums to their name owing to the superior reliability of the Mercedes power unit. Team boss Toto Wolff has already spoken about the need to switch car concept after admitting early on into the season that they had got it wrong , but what will that look like? One idea could be to go in the same direction as Red Bull, with Wolff saying that the team has no "dogmatism" over whether they copy another rival's concept. "I think at this stage we have no dogmatism of how the car should look like," said Wolff to media, including RacingNews365.com . "It just needs to be the quickest possible race car and if that car looks like a Red Bull, I don't care. It's just needs to be quick."
Wolff promises improvements
Mercedes have plans to bring the first of their big upgrades to the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, which they say should be "visible changes." Wolff says the team have been turning the car "upside down" to come up with improvements and turn around their fortunes. "It's so difficult to talk about the concept. It is all of the aerodynamic surfaces that are visible from the leading edge all the way to the diffuser and the beam wing," he explained. "There's massive amounts on the floor with a ground effect car and then there's many more architectural things that are necessary to give you the bodywork that you think is most efficient. "It [W14] is literally being turned upside down at the moment and there's a lot of goodness that we see."
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