Niki Lauda says Mercedes are developing completely new car for 2013 – Formula 1 news
Former Formula 1 driver and non-executive chairman of Mercedes, Niki Lauda has said that the Brackley based team is currently working on developing a completely new car for 2013.
Lauda said that they are positively looking forward to design an entirely new car for the next season so as to come up stronger as compared to their rivals.
“We are working on a concept for a completely new car. The current one is simply not fast enough,” Lauda said.
The Silver Arrows had quite a successful pre-season testing programme this year relatively to the preceding one in which they could barely test their car.
However, they have not been able to attain the desired results with this year’s car W03 as their driver Nico Rosberg has only claimed one race victory while his teammate, Michael Schumacher has just secured one podium finish in the season until now. Other than that, both the drivers have faced immense technical difficulties and tyre management issues in the season so far which have hindered their performance.
It will be important to mention that all the contenders are busy in making the essential changes in their cars for the coming season as the rules and regulations are expected to be almost the same in the next year.
Conversely, Mercedes are aiming to design a whole new car for 2013 instead of making the necessary advancement in the present one in order to eliminate the reliability problems.
Furthermore, it is to be noted that Lewis Hamilton of McLaren is going to join the Brackley based squad in the next season as Schumacher’s replacement. On the other hand, the seven-time world championship has decided to take retirement at the end of this year.
Therefore, the Austrian has said that they are targeting to design a fully new car for their next year’s driver line-up, Hamilton and Rosberg.
Even though, they are focusing on their coming year’s car but their team principal, Ross Brawn has said that they are not taking the remainder of the season for granted and are aiming to perform well in the forthcoming races.
Tags: