The top priority for Mercedes, especially Lewis Hamilton, since the 2021 season, has been winning the championship. However, the Brackley outfit has failed to produce a worthy challenge and challenger in the past couple of seasons. The undesirable outcome in the past couple of seasons has pushed Mercedes to take bold moves and introduce major changes. However, there is one path they would never take that Aston Martin did.

Not just in 2023, the Lawrence Stroll-owned team was accused and penalized of copying a championship-winning car under its previous guise as Racing Point back in 2020 as well. The previous avatar, termed Pink Mercedes, was a copy of the 2019 championship-winning Mercedes W10. Aston Martin took the same route in 2023 as well by copying the Red Bull RB18. The Silverstone-based outfit did find performance initially, but it could never match up to Red Bull and fell off the track mid-season. This is exactly what Hamilton has criticized Fernando Alonso and Co. for.

Lewis Hamilton bemoans the practice of copying championship-winning cars as Aston Martin sticks to their old antics

The Canadian billionaire is extremely ambitious and hasn’t shied away from expressing his championship-winning ambitions. These ambitions have given birth to the Pink Mercedes and the Green Red Bull in the past three seasons. Despite getting away scot-free for the Green Red Bull, these copycat cars have hardly yielded any results.

This is exactly why the seven-time world champion explained, during his conversation with Autosport, why Mercedes will never take this controversial route to success while discussing the major overhaul the W13 went under in the middle of the season.

“Look at the Astons. They tried to copy a car and it wasn’t the same. It is not as easy as that. You have to try and take the good parts and through trial and error just try to add other parts,” he said.

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There are a lot of ways to get to the top, but copying isn’t one. In fact, McLaren has proved a team can make massive gains in a short period of time.

Lewis Hamilton and Co take notes from McLaren as the Woking outfit leapfrogs everyone on the grid

McLaren, with their mid-season upgrade, leapfrogged everyone on the grid, bar one. This update package from the Woking outfit shocked everyone, including themselves. However, this proved the timeline to make significant gains on the track can be much shorter with bolder steps. In fact, this shocking upgrade from McLaren became the source of motivation in the Mercedes garage.

“You can see how McLaren has leapfrogged everybody else with an update that they didn’t expect to be that powerful. We just need to continue working, chipping away at our understanding and unlocking potential in the car as did Aston Martin over the winter or McLaren during the season. We won’t give up,” said Toto Wolff.

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With four months to go before we go racing again, the teams will be scrambling to get their 2024 challengers ready to fight at the front of the grid, especially with Red Bull. It will be interesting to see if successful the teams are in closing their gap to Red Bull.