Mercedes is champion in reliability

The Red Bull Racing team was the undisputed leader on the circuits last season and also made the best pit stops, but Mercedes became the unofficial champion in reliability. George Russell and Lewis Hamilton completed the most laps and the team had fewer technical problems than rivals.

Mercedes racers became leaders in the number of laps completed (2247), but not in kilometers, where they lost to Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. This will be explained by the fact that the meetings took place twice shortly after the start: with Russell at Silverstone, with Hamilton at Spa.

Red Bull Racing drivers covered 12,422 km during the season, completing 2,222 laps for two people. Three of the four technical failures for the Milton Keynes team occurred in the first three races and each time it was close to the finish. Nevertheless, in general, the championship team’s reliability statistics are also not bad, and this was fully reflected in the second part of the championship.

It is also worth noting the progress of Mercedes and Red Bull, as last year these two teams only took sixth and seventh place in terms of the number of laps completed. However, their statistics showed that the battle for victory in the championship was fierce, and this led to collisions on the track more than once.

Two teams are showing stability in terms of reliability: McLaren and Aston Martin have been in the top four in laps driven for two years in a row. In 2022, McLaren drivers completed 2,234 laps or 12,363 km, which is second in the ranking. Aston Martin is in fourth place with 2213 laps of 12221 km respectively. Both teams were technically retired three times, mainly due to problems with the power plants.

Continuing the theme of engines, it should be emphasized that the most reliable were still Mercedes engines. The racers of the Stuttgart group’s factory team received one extra power plant for the season, for which they were fined once. At the same time, Mercedes customer teams, ie McLaren (in the case of Daniel Ricciardo), Aston Martin and Williams, had almost no engine problems.

Red Bull Racing needed five Honda engines per season, and one of the AlphaTauri cars even had to place a sixth (we’re talking about Yuki Tsunoda’s car). Alpine and Ferrari also needed six engines each.

The Ferrari team was one of the leaders in reliability in 2021, taking an honorable second place in this rating, but last season it clearly lost ground and literally fell back to the last line. The drivers only completed 1990 laps in 2022. With Carlos Sainz retired four times in the very first laps (in Melbourne, Imola, Suzuka and Austin), there’s not much to brag about the Scuderia’s mileage.

The low reliability of Italian technology also affected the customer teams working with Ferrari. Alfa Romeo cars stopped on the track due to technical failures more often than F1-75s: during the season, Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou crossed the finish line 12 times. But they say the mechanics at Maranello have been able to pinpoint the causes of the problems, and it is hoped that by 2023 the Ferrari power plants will be no less efficient, but slightly more reliable.