Lewis Hamilton may win his record-tying eighth Drivers’ Championship trophy in 2024, according to McLaren CEO Zak Brown. With a significant rethink of the W14’s design philosophy, Mercedes hopes to contend for the championship again after the legendary Brit finished third in the standings in 2023.

Hamilton has had a trying time in Formula One since losing his hold on an unprecedented eighth World Championship on the last lap of the 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. After Mercedes’ gamble on their “zeropod” design concept failed to pay off at the beginning of the ground-effect era, the 39-year-old is now winless in over two seasons.

Hamilton has demonstrated that, given the chance, he still possesses the ability to challenge current world champion Max Verstappen for the championship, despite the team’s relative struggles. Over the previous two campaigns, the two drivers have engaged in some heated on-track battles, with the British driver leading his Mercedes to 15 podium finishes since his most recent win.

Regarding his team’s chances for the 2024 campaign, Brown told Speedcafe, “We feel like we’re going to take a step forward because of what we’re seeing in the wind tunnel and CFD right now.

“How much? The great mystery on Red Bull is when did they turn off the development of their car to focus on next year. And I think the answer is probably pretty early, so we’ll just have to wait and see how much Adrian Newey magic comes out of the oven so to speak to see where we are.”

“And at the same time Mercedes or Ferrari, these teams have everything they need and are great teams and I wouldn’t be surprised if we were sitting here and all of a sudden Mercedes was back to Lewis winning his eighth championship.”

Mercedes is hoping to give Hamilton a car that can compete with Red Bull by completely revamping the design concept. After doubling down on their misguided philosophy this time last year, the Silver Arrows are anticipated to take a drastic new turn with James Allison leading the development once again.

But as Brown pointed out, it will be difficult to even match, much less defeat the current world champions. Red Bull’s dominance allowed them to shift their development focus to their 2024 rival midway through the season, having won 21 of the 22 Grands Prix that were available.