The Mercedes team is facing its most difficult season since the hybrid era began in Formula 1 back in 2014. With the radical change in technical rules, those from Brackley have not been successful in the design of the W13, the single-seater with which Lewis Hamilton and George Russell must compete each weekend throughout the 23 grand prix that make up the calendar.
In the second round in Jeddah, the seven-time champion was eliminated in Q1 of the classification for the first time since the 2017 Brazilian GP, although that time it was due to an accident, so you have to go back to the British GP in 2009 to see the Englishman miss out on the next round in dry and uneventful conditions.
In Saudi Arabia, Hamilton had to settle for a single point. Getting out of the car, he explained that he was unable to keep up with Kevin Magnussen’s Haas, but also that part of the problems with his Mercedes came from a different side than they initially thought: “We need more grip and more power. Not today.” we have had porpoising”.
However, his teammate, George Russell , was able to put in a better performance.
“I think we both feel the same, but he did a better job,” said Hamilton of the 24-year-old Englishman, who finished fifth in the Saudi Arabian round, and who did not agree with the words of his companion in the Brackley garage about the source of the W13’s problems.
“We keep losing speed, and on a track like this, I don’t know if it’s just a tweak or bigger changes. I don’t know how much drag we have compared to the others, but it seems like a lot,” Russell explained.
“There are a lot of factors at play between the stiffness of the car, the layout of the floor and the tire pressures,” said the better of the two drivers last weekend. “The engine mode too, the faster you go, the worse it behaves, so it makes it harder for qualifying as we turn the power up to the max, we go fast down the straight, which causes more downforce and causes more poising”.
They still have two weeks to solve this effect until the next appointment, the Australian Grand Prix, at least in Russell’s car: “We have to anticipate the problem for the race, when you have the DRS closed and more load than with it open It’s something to keep in mind. We’re still learning, so we’re still a long way from maximizing the car, so I said if we fix porpoising, 99% of our problems will be solved.”
“We are going to start trying to develop the car around these issues, but we have to get to the bottom of it, which is porpoisig. All cars perform better with lower height, and we can’t come close to what our rivals do,” he said. the British.
In Mercedes they are aware of the problems that slow down their performance, for a reason they are the current world champions and have the record of winning the constructors’ title eight consecutive times.
“We have information, we’re still learning, and we’re taking baby steps at the moment, so we need to take a leap to find the problems and solve them,” Russell said. “I have no doubt that when we do that we will find some lap time but, as I said before, that is easier said than done.”
The first of the German cars was quite far from the fight between the Red Bulls and the Ferraris, the clear dominators of the beginning of the 2022 Formula 1 season: “We are one second behind, we have work to do, review the data, but everyone knows what we have to improve.
“I think we manage the race better than qualifying, but setbacks are inherent, they’re still there,” said the Englishman. “When I look at the result, we finished 30 seconds behind in about 30 laps after the safety car, that’s how far we are in qualifying as well.
