Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff has revealed that nobody is going to face the sack as a result of the Germans’ miserable start to 2023, with some having questioned if technical director Mike Elliott was at risk of being fired.
The Brackley-based team have endured a miserable start to the season, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell having finished fifth and seventh at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix.
Several meetings took place amongst Mercedes’ senior figures after they slipped to fourth in the pecking order in Bahrain, with the concept of the W14 having been questioned.
Multiple pundits pondered whether Elliott may lose his job should Mercedes be forced into a concept change, something which will cost them valuable time.
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Wolff has stressed, though, that no engineers will be facing the exit door, with the side not prepared to suddenly “make heads roll”.
“An organisation is constantly changing and you can’t stop that either,” Wolff said.
“Now it’s about how we develop further and discussions are taking place about what the organisation should look like in the future.
“But it is not as if we are going to make heads roll. It’s better to ask, ‘how can we function as well as possible in the future?’”
George Russell and Lewis Hamilton qualified P3 and P5, respectively, for the 2023 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Russell went on to finish in fourth, with Hamilton just behind him in fifth.
Speaking after round 1 in Bahrain, Wolff labelled the season-opener as “one of the worst days in racing”.
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“One of the worst days in racing,” Wolff said after the chequered flag in Bahrain.
“Really not good at all – we were just lacking pace front, right, and centre. Red Bull is just on a different planet. That is what hurts because they are so far ahead, it reminds me of our best years because we just put a second on everybody else.
“That is the benchmark and we have to do one step after the other to come back and we can do that. We can, absolutely we can. I think it needs to be much more radical in the steps than hope for a three tenths upgrade. I think we’ve almost doubled if not if not tripled the gap to Red Bull – and this is what we need to look at.”