Mercedes fire warning to Max Verstappen as details of 2023 car emerge | F1 | Sport

Mercedes have revealed they finally understand the issues with their car and suggest they could be back “fighting right at the front” as early as next season in a major warning to Max Verstappen. Mercedes have lacked pace compared to Red Bull and Ferrari and are often the third-fastest team at most races.However, technical director Mike Elliott has claimed the Silver Arrows have got on top of the problem and could keep their current design. The team have previously suggested they could steal some concepts from other teams including Red Bull.But, Elliott now stresses finding solutions to be near the front could be “within the bounds of what’s possible”. Speaking in the press conference, Elliott explained: “Obviously, we’re well into next year’s car at the moment. I think in terms of trying to predict what sort of lap time you need to find it’s quite difficult.“I think there are races this year (when) we’ve been very close. In fact, our race performance has been pretty decent at a number of races, and there have been races where we’re somewhere away.READ MORE: Max Verstappen hints that he was behind Nyck de Vries move“And I think what we’ve been trying to do is to understand that and I think we do understand that now. We know what we need to put right. So you’re then looking to say once you put that right, how much performance do you need to find and I’m obviously not going to give you a number because that would be giving a lot away.“But I think it’s within the bounds of what’s possible to find so I think we’ve got to work diligently, work hard over the winter, but hopefully we can get ourselves back into position where we’re fighting right at the front.” Hamilton has previously admitted the current Mercedes was one of the worst cars he has ever driven.At the Belgian Grand Prix, the seven-time champion said he “won’t miss” the car at the end of the season.DON’T MISSLewis Hamilton identiies Mercedes issue compared to Max Verstappen [INSIGHT]Jenson Button fires warning to Daniel Ricciardo amid Mercedes links [ANALYSIS]Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen saga set for more twists  [COMMENT]He has since stressed the team wants to change “loads of bits” on the package for next year. Elliott’s remarks come after George Russell also admitted the team had found a development direction for 2023.He commented: “We have a target, and that is a massive positive in itself. We know what we’re chasing, we have a clear target we’re trying to chase now.”Can we achieve that? I have every confidence that we can. We obviously don’t know how much our rivals are going to improve over this winter, but I definitely have confidence that we will have a more complete car across the circuit range going into 2023.”



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