Toto Wolff says his Mercedes engineering team are not "convinced about the beauty" of Red Bull's Formula 1 floor. At the recent Monaco Grand Prix, a crash for Sergio Perez led to the floor of the RB19 being exposed for the first time - as rival teams were able to see the secrets of the underside of the class-leading car for the first time. In 2023, the floors of the cars are the key performance-differentiator, with the other nine teams all taking a close look at the underside of the car which is set to claim the Constructors' Championship. While Mercedes are looking at what could inspire them on the floor of the car, Wolff has admitted that the aesthetics aren't that pleasing.
Wolff on Red Bull's floor
"For me, if it's complex or not, if it is fast, it is good," Wolff explained to media including RacingNews365 on the Red Bull floor. "That floor is certainly very fast. I asked the question [about the complexity of it] into my engineering group and they said there are interesting things they can analyse as part of the air-flow functions. "But they weren't convinced about the beauty, the aesthetics of the flow and just how it functions." The Mercedes boss also touched on the problems his own team had with bouncing as they struggled to get to grips with the new cars in 2022, believing the problem to now be "non-existent." "There is no more talk about changing the regulations or raising the floor edges," he added. "The bouncing is a de facto non-existent topic anymore, when it happened in [Spanish GP Qualifying] we knew which direction we shouldn't have gone. Now we can see performance and downforce. "But the caveat is that you can get it very wrong with the targets, that's why you see these massive swings between teammates and swings in performance."
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