Mercedes unveiled an extreme design for the first season of the ground effect concept in F1. And he paid dearly for that decision. The W13, with its molded shape and slim sides, challenged engineers and pilots alike. It was also a test of patience, as he ended up taking the eight-time champion out of every title fight
“We have to give our people the benefit of the doubt. They built great racing cars in the past.” The sentence was said by the boss Toto Wolffafter a grueling weekend, still in the opening stages of the season, when Mercedes tried to find a solution to the riddle W13🇧🇷 And it speaks a lot about the 2022 experienced by the team that dominated the F1 in the past eight years. One of the objectives of the drastic regulation change was to change the order of forces in the World Championship, but nobody was able to predict that this new generation of cars could take the German team out of the game.
When opting for an extreme project, the german team faced all kinds of problems. However, the most surprising thing is that, despite the development skills demonstrated many times in the last few championships, the star’s team took almost the entire season to understand their creature. In fact, even at the end of the year, engineers still acknowledged that they didn’t really know everything about the W13’s strange behavior. There’s a lot to say about this, but the fact is that Mercedes has put a diva on the track, but not in a good way, as Wolff liked to describe his cars in moments of superiority.
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One attempt to explain the challenges of this design has to do with the manner of aerodynamic decisions made by the team led by James Allison🇧🇷 Mike Elliott🇧🇷 John Owen and Jarrod Murphy🇧🇷 The silver car was born with a very narrow design. The designers have designed very thin sidepods in a modular design. No car on the grid resembled the W13, in fact the multiple samples were unique in every respect. However, it’s also fair to say that the creativity in tuning the side vents wasn’t among the real problems. The question also revolved around the bottom of the car.
When downforce began to be determined by the floor, Mercedes was faced with great inefficiency in this area. The W13 simply didn’t generate downforce at high speeds. And worse, it’s bounced wildly.
No one has suffered more than Mercedes when it comes to dolphin🇧🇷 As is known, this phenomenon was one of the great consequences of the ground effect. In the case of the eight-time champion, however, the vertical swings were more violent. And that took away from performance and downforce, because the engineers had to increase ground clearance for the car to be even minimally fit.
Faced with this, Mercedes dedicated the entire first part of the season to experiments, especially with Lewis Hamilton🇧🇷 On several occasions, especially during Friday free practice, the assessment of the car’s set-up and the prediction of its behavior were inconclusive. However, on many occasions the team didn’t even understand why the car became unusable from session to session. Although, George Russell and Hamilton won podiums here and there. And there was something even crazier: despite the desolate scenery, the team was still holding a war tank. The car would not have broken down, while Red Bull and Ferrari have been struggling with reliability issues. Furthermore, the pace of the race was often more consistent than in qualifying.
But even if all this was a strength, it wasn’t enough, as Mercedes stayed away from the fight for victories and, consequently, for the championship. So tempers inside the garage flared easily with each new drama. Highlight for three moments. In Imolahaving spent the entire race behind Pierre Gasley and out in the points, Hamilton was only 13th. On the radio, he heard Wolff apologize and say, “Sorry I had to fly him today. We know he’s drivable.”
This was the first sign that something was wrong. A few weeks later, after the Azerbaijan GPwhere the Mercedes pair suffered bouncing due to the big pit straight and swell, the Austrian was more blunt: “Lewis, we all know you’re driving a box of shit. Sorry about the back pain. from this”.
A week later, in CanadaHamilton vented after another disastrous Friday: “It’s the worst car I’ve ever driven.”
Thus, the perception of Brackley’s leading men shed light on the woes the team had gotten themselves into in 2022. Other factors corroborated the desperation. TO Spain, sixth stage of the year, Mercedes has taken the first major upgrade package. The new parts only worked for one race: the Spanish GP itself. This is because the steps in the street – Monk and Baku – they were terrible. So the team prepared a new attack: England🇧🇷 One of the best performances of the year. Had it not been for the strategy, Hamilton could have won.
Subsequently, the team decided to update the car race by race, in an attempt to understand the changes in behavior more quickly. Then it began to dawn on Mercedes that they were really having problems on the long straights and in the higher speed sections, as well as in the low speed corners. Gradually, the engineers kept breakdowns to a minimum and took more control of the situation: Hamilton modified a sequence of podiums already close to the end of the first part of the championship. Certainly the technical evolution of the eight-time world champion could have been greater if it hadn’t been for the budget ceiling. Constraints on wind tunnel hours and general economics also impacted performance and provided a late jump in performance.
It was already at the end of the year, in US GPthat the German team promoted more tangible changes, even if the nature of the tracks had a big influence on the overall performance. austin🇧🇷 Mexico City And especially, St. Paul they were generous with Mercedes. That’s because everything built into the car worked. It was also at this stage that the squadron was able to win.
The silver team dominated the weekend in Interlake🇧🇷 He secured pole in the sprint race with Russell, who led Hamilton’s brace on Sunday. It was a performance from other times and served to recharge the team’s energy.
However, at the end of the season in Abu Dhabi, the W13 once again proved to be unpredictable. Which put another question mark in the minds of the engineers. And this is how Mercedes closed 2022: celebrating the small goals, but also worried. “We don’t lack skills or tools. It took layer after layer to get to the root of the problem. I think we solved the underlying problem with the jumps, but not everything could be done on the 2022 car. It will be easier next year We’re going to change the architecture and layout of the car a bit and that should take us in the right direction,” said Wolff.
“With the new regulations, sometimes you discover a problem, but you realize there was another hidden one. We have to be humble and not think we can go back to the league and win from the start.”
“The spending limit will be a challenge for everyone and will bring us opponents who are not our opponents today. I don’t think eight consecutive titles will be possible again. On the other hand, we have more wind tunnel time than Red Bull and Ferrari. That one advantage that we have to exploit,” decreed the Mercedes boss.
Despite the final numbers (a triumph, 17 podiums, a pole position, a victory in the sprint, six fastest laps), the squadron experienced yet another setback and has become only a luxury supporting actor, which is very, very little for those coming from historic eight titles in a row.
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Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
