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Ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix where Max Verstappen might be crowned world champion for a third consecutive time, Mercedes has already conceded defeat and set sights on the 2024 season. Andrew Shovlin, Mercedes' trackside engineering director told Sky that the car will have considerable changes next year. 

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Despite the hype at the beginning of the season, Mercedes performed rather underwhelmingly as both Lewis Hamilton and George Russel struggled with the W14. Shovlin admitted that W14 did not have enough stability as both drivers remained reluctant to attack high-speed corners, throughout the season.

However, the Mercedes backroom staff is confident of next year and has already set themselves "very ambitious targets" to improve things for 2024. 

"We are changing the car quite considerably for next year. Whether or not we can solve all the issues that we've got on the handling, that will depend on a number of projects delivering," said Shovlin. 

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"Those projects are underway. They are not complete, but we have got some good directions to try and improve that."

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Reflecting on the seasons when Mercedes produced its best cars, Shovlin said that even then the team engineers remained oblivious to the fate of the car. 

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"When we launched our best cars, 2015 or 2019, those years, we didn't know they were going to be great cars when we developed them, you are just working as hard as you can trying to find as much performance as you can."

Despite looking forward to the 2024 car, Shovlin maintains that the eight-time constructor champions are pushing to keep Ferrari at bay whilst occupying the second position on the table, 

Currently, Mercedes' advantage over Ferrari is 20 points but the Scuderia have more than halved their deficit to their rivals in the four races since the summer break.

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After the Suzuka race, Rosie Wait, the team's head of race strategy during a debrief said the team hoped that the new parts installed in the car could show the desired performance, going into the fag end of the season. 

"The new parts we bring to the track do both; hopefully they add performance and make the current car go faster, but they are all specifically targeted around areas where we need to further our understanding,:" said Wait. 

Notably, Red Bull driver Verstappen only needs to finish in the top six in this week's sprint race at the Qatar Grand Prix to secure the 2023 F1 drivers' title. The Dutch has already won 13 of the 15 races as well as two of three sprints this season. 

Barring the aberration at Singapore, where Verstappen had a drop in performance, he has been truly consistent - often pulling away from the rest of the grid, without breaking any sweat. 

(With inputs from agencies)

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