Chapter One Shock & Awe The Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir March 3-5, 2023 Six days before the opening race weekend of the season, a foretelling had occurred at the Mercedes F1 factory in Brackley. It presented itself to key personnel on a crisp Sunday morning as bright and clear as a crystal ball. The prediction concerned the car for the forthcoming season. Nobody liked what they saw. This glimpse into the future involved no dark arts, just data from the three days of on-track testing permitted to all teams. The assessment had taken place at the same circuit in Bahrain where Toto Wolff''s ambition to launch a championship contender would ultimately run out of road. Until then, as the trackside engineers convened to pick over their findings--having just returned from the Gulf island state on a red-eye flight--a shard of time was still available to unlock performance from that year''s new car. According to the simulations, the W14 had the potential to be at one with the track in terms of better handling and ultimately faster lap times.
The team just needed to conjure it from the car in order to reshape their destiny. I arrived at the Mercedes F1 factory in good time for the post-testing debrief. This isn''t your conventional manufacturing plant. The team''s base is more like a sprawling tech campus comprising trim and functional buildings and a tree-lined avenue that takes visitors across a bridge over a river to the main operations center. In a race to be the fastest on the track, Mercedes F1 can''t afford to be a nine-to-five operation. Apart from two mandatory annual shutdowns that apply to every team in the sport--literally freezing all work for a fortnight in the summer and again at Christmas--the factory is open day and night. So, despite the fact that dawn had only just broken on this traditional day of rest, I checked in with a lobby receptionist looking like he was midway through his shift. Here, visitors like me take a lanyard and then pretend to be cool about the enormous wall cabinet of trophies.
It''s a reminder, if one is needed, that this is the headquarters of one of the most successful teams in Formula 1. I also found it impossible to ignore the fact that an actual racing car is on display in the seating area. The bodywork is sleek and predominantly black--part of a commitment to promoting diversity and fighting racism. Toward the rear of the car the livery fades to silver, a signature color for Mercedes throughout their history in motorsport. Indeed, the current F1 team are also known as the Silver Arrows. Look closely at the front wing and tiny chips and scratches incurred at high speed reveal themselves like scars from the heat of battle. In the silence and stillness of the lobby, at odds with its natural envi-ronment on the track, the car seemed like some kind of engineering taxidermy. The car in question is the Mercedes-AMG F1 W12 E Performance, commonly abbreviated to the W12.
* Like fine wines, there have been plenty of vintage years since the current Mercedes F1 team returned to the sport in 2010 with the W01. While the W12 counts among them, this one also comes with a finish that is still hard for many to swallow. That the nose sported a #44 decal--Lewis Hamilton''s iconic race number--spelled out to me that this is in fact an artifact from motor-sport history: the 2021 challenger in which Hamilton had been denied the World Drivers'' Championship under such controversial circumstances. *The full naming convention combines the team''s German automotive heritage (the "W" standing for "wagen," which means "car" in the home country of Mercedes-Benz) with a numbering system that began with 01 in 1926. The current Mercedes F1 team adapted the system with a number reset and the insertion of "F1" in front of the "W" to distinguish the modern era of cars. In recent years, a new "E Performance" technology label has been added in recognition of the work by the team''s Brixworth division. It only takes me a moment, before I am invited to join the meeting upstairs, to recognize that the car is on display lest the team forget. For such a significant prize to be snatched away on the last lap of the final race of that season had floored Mercedes F1.
In 2022, it was just as painful for the team to find that the successor to the W12 was unable to match the performance of Red Bull and also Ferrari. For the Silver Arrows as much as the fans, the W13 just served as a reminder that Formula 1 is a car development competition as much as a battle on the track. Now the new season beckoned. With every team set to pick over their findings from the three-day testing session, the race was effectively under way. My first impression was that I''d walked into some advanced war chamber, a clinically white space accommodating a boardroom table that had to be twenty meters in length. From slots in the table''s surface, monitors were in the process of rising soundlessly in front of every seat. The generals, represented by some two dozen engineers and car-critical personnel, had gathered on arrival to refuel at the coffee trolley. They had come a long way to be here, after all.
Even without the caffeine hit, however, this group, in team regulation travel wear (a casual combination of white T-shirt and sneakers, gray sweater and blue joggers), seemed to be strikingly alert. In Formula 1, time waits for no team. These are people well-versed in hopping continents and then putting in a solid shift at the factory. With just a week to go before the season start, every available second could make a difference to performance. Among the major players, I recognized Technical Director Mike Elliott and Andrew Shovlin, the team''s Trackside Engineering Director known to everyone (quite possibly including his own family) as "Shov." As well as the group gathered in this room, another ten or so names and faces popped up in the videoconference window that appeared on our monitors. It was only as the meeting convened--on the hour and with no preamble--that I detected some anxiety behind such focus among those present. "Where we''ve ended up is not acceptable," said an opening voice from so far down the other end of the table that I couldn''t see who was behind it.
The view is quickly echoed by those who address the room in turn. "It wasn''t long ago that we were kings of winter testing," said Peter Bonnington ruefully. He is better known as Bono, Lewis Hamilton''s Race Engineer. "It feels like we''ve slipped." With every contribution over the next forty-five minutes, effectively a summary of performance from the testing session presented by a different group head, the data on the screen changed. From lap-time telemetry to tire-wear analytics, each pictogram or tracer chart highlighted different characteristics of the W14. With only fractional differences between teammates Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, but notable shortfalls compared to key rivals like Red Bull and Ferrari, the overall picture provided little scope for interpretation. Throughout, Shov steered the meeting in his efficient and pragmatic style; a voice of calm but with an awareness that improvements had to be found.
"Are we, as leaders, holding standards high enough?" he asked at one point. It''s a rhetorical question, but one met by an uncomfortable pause. In less than a week, these engineers would fly back to Bahrain for the first grand prix of the season. Until then, as they saw things, there was still time to overcome obstacles. In a race of their own, it would begin with identifying why the performance was not forthcoming and then working out how to wrest it from the car. Around the table, I sensed people begin to shuffle as if turning their thoughts to the onerous task at hand. It was only when Shov seemed set to wind up the meeting that a voice cut in to address the room remotely. "This is just not good enough.
" The Austrian accent instantly identified the contributor on the videoconference link. If anyone had been set to breathe out, on hearing Toto Wolff they promptly put that on hold. "We need to feel a certain degree of embarrassment here." The boss sounded tense and frustrated. The car was central to his concern but what also needled Wolff was the fact that as an engine supplier to several teams on the grid, Mercedes were being outperformed by a customer. If Aston Martin delivered on the promise they had just shown in testing . and here he paused, to let those in the room play this out for themselves. Then, as if returning to a more comfortable space, Wolff went on to remind his team that they possessed everything necessary--the values, knowledge, expertise, and resources--to build a race-winning car.
"We blame the problem not the person," he finished, stressing a collective responsibility that included himself, "but nevertheless . come on!".