Mercedes will shift focus 'pretty soon': 'We have no choice'

Wolff thinks Mercedes can beat Verstappen

Verstappen is currently in a dominant period with Red Bull, but unbeatable? He certainly is not, according to Wolff. "I always believe that we can beat Max," says the Mercedes boss adamantly in front of GPblog and others . "We have a good group of people, best drivers, we just have to give them a car and it's more predictable."

Mercedes has previously indicated that the sidepods are not as important as many assume, but McLaren team boss Andrea Stella dismissed that as nonsense. Wolff says the truth lies in the middle: "You know, we had the side pod concept and the bodywork in the tunnel, very early on already, to see which avenues it would open up and how much it would add to performance," Wolff said.

He continued: "The relative loss of downforce, the way we measured it, was substantial. So it's not something that we wanted to follow up early in the year. Will we change our design direction? I think we have a great group of aerodynamicists, led by James, and I'm sure that it will be a consideration seeing the step ahead.."

Mercedes shifts focus to 2024

So it is possible that Mercedes will take a different route with next year's design. According to Wolff, when is the time to abandon the W14 and shift the focus to 2024? "I think pretty soon. We have no choice.," replied the 51-year-old Austrian. "It's about coming back, being able to win a world championship in that respect. That's not going to happen this year. So we need to set our eyes into next year."