Mercedes introduced their heavily-updated W14 featuring new sidepods at this weekend’💛s Monaco Grand Prix, with the team finally abandonin😼g their ‘zeropod’ after over a year. 

Their revised sidepod design now ♛follows a similar philosophy to the one f🌳avoured by Red Bull, who have dominated since the start of F1’s new regulation era which began in 2022. 

Asked if he was surprised it has taken Mercedes ovꦺer a year to follow the same path as Red Bull, Haওmilton replied: “Sure.

“I don’t know what else to say,” he added. “It definitely is difficult when you se♑e it and you see the proof of the concept and it’s working.”

But the seven-time world champion, who wil🌺l start fifth at the Monaco Grand Prix, insisted Mercedes still have a long way to go to catch Red Bull. 

“It’s not as easy as just changing it,” Hami💙lton explained. 

“You saw that last year the Aston just changed the sidepods and they didn’t go faster. It ❀took a whole heap of work over the winter.

“The fact is we are more in that direction. B🐼ut still, the airflow that they have, how they control their wake and everything is still a little bit different to ours.

“I think there’s work we need to do in order to be💫 able to use a smaller wing [like] they have. 

“We’re still not as efficient, they still have less drag, they still have more downforce pretty much💯 everywhere. And so we’ve got a lot of work to catch up.”