Can an replace fill the hole?

May 26 – Appearance of side pods on Mercedesthe heavily updated 2023 Monaco car will not be a “magic trick” to throw a struggling team back into P1.

This is a team driver warning George Russell following the appearance of Red Bull-style sidepods on the car concept, which both this year and last year was dubbed by the media as an innovative “no sidepod” solution.

“I can feel the aero progress,” Russell said when asked how the updates in the simulator were.

“We’ll have to wait and see what happens with the rest. You’ll only get the final answer at the track.”

However, he is sure that the sidepods themselves will not be a silver bullet.

“I hope I’m wrong, but side pods won’t be a magic trick,” said Russell.

“It’s more like we put it on the car as a strike-off mark because we tried it. Then there will be no more question marks on the matter.

“But the real magic happens elsewhere.”

Auto Motor und Sport believes the step forward could only be about three-tenths, and a source at Mercedes denies that the team simply copied Red Bull’s sidepods.

“You can’t look at anything in isolation,” the source said. “All parts interact with each other.

“These side skirts are shaped to best suit our current overall design.”

Lewis Hamiltonmeanwhile, there is little hope that the success or failure of the upgrade package will be evident in Monaco – after originally scheduled for the canceled imola weekend.

“It will be difficult to see how it works on this type of track, but hopefully it will bring us a little closer,” said the 38-year-old.

“I don’t think we’re going to fight for the win, but hopefully it’ll be more of a fight.”

Hamilton also denied that whether or not the new package worked could affect his contract talks.

“No, it doesn’t matter because we’re still a championship-winning team,” he said. “We just had the wrong car.

“There have been some decisions made in the last two years that weren’t ideal and we’re working on that.”

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