The Mercedes team has its most difficult year ahead since the hybrid era began in Formula 1, as it will be very difficult for them to win their ninth consecutive constructors’ title. Lewis Hamilton’s performance at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, crashing out of Q1 for the first time since 2017, and scoring just one point in the race, reveals the W13 ‘s shortcomings in 2022.
In the team they are aware that they must solve the problems that make the seven-time champion suffer, their main asset to do with a world championship that seems to be getting further and further away, and that it will probably fall into the hands of one of the four Ferrari or Red Bull drivers.
The technical director of the German team, Andrew Shovlin , in a video posted on the team’s official YouTube channel, explained the main setbacks for Mercedes at this start of the era in Formula 1 with the radical change in regulations.
“We are under no illusions about what the performance difference is in Jeddah, in the end, it was a bit bigger than in Bahrain, but we still have something to find, both in qualifying and in the long runs to challenge the Ferrari cars. and Red Bull”, indicated the English.
“Behind us, though, it looks like we have a bit of a margin with the midfield,” Shovlin acknowledges. “We need to do a good job to be ahead of them, but we have some distance which gives us breathing room to do experiments on the weekends and try to find solutions for the car.”
Mercedes will work hard to recover the level lost in the winter, and its nerve centers in the United Kingdom: “It is a problem that is going to be solved in the factories of Brackley and in Brixworth. They are all working very hard to understand it and find solutions in the next races”.
“On the track, we are going to do as much as we can to minimize damage, add as many numbers as possible,” continued Mercedes’ chief technical officer. “So there are two keys, maximizing the performance in the grand prix, but the important thing is to get back to the level where we can compete for pole positions and wins.
The Germans know the points they need to improve, but they are still not able to solve the setbacks that come their way with the efficiency of the past : “We still don’t understand the car, at least not how we did it at the end of last year, we’ve only had two races with him.
“We’re digging into the Lewis [Hamilton] set-up, trying to find the direction where we have the performance, and we did it from Friday to Saturday,” Shovlin said of the Saudi Grand Prix. “We went a bit further in qualifying, and he lacked grip at the rear.
“Yeda is a circuit where you need a lot of confidence, it is very fast, the walls are very close, and when you lack that in the tires, the driver loses confidence. We went too far, but it was something useful to learn,” he said. engineer.
“The car now is not fast enough, unless we have the perfect grip, we are going to have to take risks in those sessions. We need to make a faster car as soon as possible,” said the Englishman from Mercedes.
