Mercedes 'hasn't ruled out fighting for 2022 F1 title' as upgrades show promise

Mercedes says that its latest update for the 2022 British Grand Prix has worked and it's at the "better end" of its car's bouncing issue, allowing the team to consider a "long-shot" late F1 championship run

Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone ahead of the 2022 british Grand Prix

Mercedes says that it continues to make steps forward

DPPI

Has the Mercedes Formula 1 team finally got on top of the difficult W13, giving Lewis Hamilton and George Russell a chance to challenge Red Bull and Ferrari for race wins in 2022?

The signs are certainly positive – and if we have three teams in the mix the rest of this season could be fascinating.

After a difficult start to the new ground effect era Mercedes appeared to make good progress when it introduced a big package of updates in Barcelona back in May.

That event was followed by three bumpy street or temporary tracks in Monaco, Baku and Montreal that may have diluted that progress.

A return to a “normal” track at fast and smooth Silverstone has coincided with the introduction of another set of updates to the car, and as the team had hoped the two factors appear to have worked together to put the car in a more competitive window.

Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton leaves the Silverstone pitlane in British Grand Prix practice

Updates and the smooth Silverstone asphalt have given Mercedes renewed hope

Steve Etherington/Mercedes

Indeed in dry FP2 session at Silverstone on Friday Hamilton was an encouraging second fastest, just 0.163sec off Carlos Sainz.

We didn’t get to see how qualifying would have unfolded in dry conditions, but there were more signs of promise in the wet with Russell taking third in Q1 and Hamilton second in Q2. In the session that mattered they were only fifth and eighth, with Hamilton ahead, which was perhaps not a true reflection of the W13’s potential.

Nevertheless the team was encouraged by progress, and by the way it was able to control the bouncing that has been a problem all year, even if it was still evident in some corners.

“You’ll never get rid of bouncing with these ground effect cars”

“We did some changes overnight to try and improve the high-speed cornering, which was a bit of a limitation,” head of trackside engineering Andrew Shovlin said after qualifying.

“And for us in a straight line, we’ve pretty much got on top of the bouncing if the track’s smooth. But in the high-speed corners it was coming in.

“We were just looking at how we set the car up and some option parts around that, and it looked like we’ve made a bit of a step forward this morning. And qualifying, I think we could have done better. At other times in the session it looked like we were closer to the front.

“But if you look at how the car is working, the balance, it’s now more logical. The changes you make, you’re getting the effect that you expect. And that for us it’s quite an important thing. It just helps us develop the car, but also get the most out of it in any weekend.”

Andrew Shovlin

Shovlin says that the team can finally get the best out of the car

Mercedes

Bouncing hasn’t been eliminated, and instead the team is learning more about how to work around it. At Silverstone it was evident in quick corners.

“In the dry George looked like he was the quickest in Turn 9 [Copse], which is probably the most challenging corner here. And he was able to take that flat this morning. We were expecting that problem. It’s exactly what we were seeing in Barcelona.

“I don’t think you’ll ever get rid of it with these ground effect cars. It’s always going be there to some extent. But we do seem to be at the better end of it. And it’s not dominating the balance completely. You’d always like to get rid of it. But yeah, that will be difficult with the ground effect that we’ve got.”

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Was there any frustration that the team was not able to see how the car performed in a normal dry qualifying session?

“To be honest, it wouldn’t be anywhere near the frustration that we’d be feeling if we brought a load of parts and we felt like we’ve gone backwards,” said Shovlin.

“Because as I said the thing that worries us is not having a development direction. The race pace was okay on Friday, I think we made a step forward overnight, it remains to be seen where we drop out. But if we have, it should be at least a fun race for us if we can keep up with the Red Bulls and the Ferraris for once.”

It’s not too simplistic to suggest that after all the firefighting of the last few months, trying to understand the car and address fundamental issues, and then getting through those awkward street tracks, the team now has a handle on things.

“In the first few races, we were just of fighting to survive”

And it can now properly start to address performance and get closer to the frontrunners on a regular basis, and in other words do the things that the team is usually so good at doing.

“In the first few races, we were literally just sort of fighting to survive,” Shovlin admitted. “And the drivers were fighting to survive with a car that was incredibly difficult to work with. But we did a decent job there of scoring points, actually and picking up on the opportunities when others were unreliable.

“Barcelona was useful for us because we had something that wasn’t bouncing around on every circuit that we went to. But clearly that run of three street tracks highlighted another weakness. And to be honest, we’re just going through it, looking for the problems, and then we’ll try and apply our engineering skills to solving them.

“But I would say that the route that we want to take now is becoming increasingly clear. And that’s encouraging from a development point of view. I think this update is the first proper update along the line that we started to create in Barcelona, this is the first one that we brought to the track, and it’s encouraging to see that it’s worked.”

Mercedes of George Russell in the rain qualifying for the 2022 British Grand Prix

Mercedes was optimistic about qualifying… and then the rain fell

Mercedes

As Shovlin suggested the Spanish GP update package was a crucial step in the learning process, giving the team a direction in which to go.

“We changed concept in Barcelona perhaps in terms of the way the car was working to try and solve some of that bouncing. And whilst our issues with bouncing quite rightly generated a lot of interest in the early races because we were at the worst end of the pack, if you look at us here, I think we’re actually near the better end of it, we’re certainly not the best, but we’re a long way from being the worst.

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“So I think we have made progress. And what we’re left with is a car that is a bit stiffer than we would like. But it’s certainly a car that we can start to work with.”

All year ride height has been a critical factor, and the difficult thing has been to find the right compromise between performance and bouncing at each track.

“With these regulations, the challenge was always going to be generating downforce high up, it does look like we are running low. And that is one of the things that we’d like to develop, but we’re making progress in that direction.

“But, you know, in terms of the concept of the car, we’ve actually changed our car an awful lot since it first ran, it’s behaving very, very differently to when it first ran. Even though if you look at it from a distance it looks quite similar to what we had at round one, aerodynamically it is quite different beast now.”

Mercedes W13 of Lewis Hamilton in 2022 F1 Bahrain testing

This year’s bold concept has seen substantial changes since the season-opening Bahrain GP

DPPI

As Shovlin hinted earlier, while the street races were difficult for Mercedes, they also provided some valuable lessons. Those have fed back into the development process.

“They were they were quite interesting from a point of view of understanding what’s not right with the car at the moment. And in previous years we’ve won championships by designing a car that works well over the average track. You’ll have seen that often we weren’t the best in Monaco, we weren’t the best in Mexico.

“But when we came to your bog-standard racing circuits, we were always there or thereabouts. And we’re always going to aim to do that with this car. But we’re not where we want to be with that at the moment.”

Mercedes’ 2023 car is already taking shape

The bigger picture in the background is 2023 and beyond. The W14 is already taking shape on the computer screens in Brackley, and all the lessons learned in recent months are feeding into that.

“We’re still very much focused on this car at the moment”

“With next year’s car at the moment we’re at the concept stage, where you’re looking at the big changes, the things that you’re locked into from the first running of the car for the whole year, really. And those are the bits, you put the effort into trying to get right. And then we’re also looking at where how can you create development opportunity within the car.

“But we’re still very much focused on this car at the moment. And we don’t know whether we can fight for second in the championship, we’re not ruling out fighting for first even though it feels increasingly like a long shot.

“But we’re full steam ahead trying to develop this and get into the fight, because that’s by far the most important thing, showing that we can solve these problems more so than where we finish in the championship.”