Season Results: Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team

In 2022, Mercedes finished the season in third place in the Constructors’ Championship, its worst result since 2012…

Severe rule changes for the 2022 season couldn’t help but erode the balance of power in the group leaders – the battle proved too tight last season, when Mercedes made its first move to hybrid turbo engines.

The team had been preparing intensely for the new season and was confident that they had built a competitive car, but already during the traditional first run-in at Silverstone, the W13 (the team claimed not to be superstitious) showed itself to be did not behave exactly as the calculations showed, justifying the unfortunate name.

Tests in Barcelona confirmed the fears, but the team prepared the full version of the new aerodynamic body kit – with invisible side pontoons that surprised everyone, for the second test, where they hoped for serious progress. But even after the change in aerodynamics, nothing has changed.

Andrew Schovlin: “We saw the first signs of problems on the first day of shooting with a new car at Silverstone. During the tests in Barcelona it became clear that we were not competitive enough, but we were counting on the update that we were preparing for the tests in Bahrain. And when we put new items in and the car didn’t go any faster, it became clear that we were in trouble.

The main problem was the vertical structure, which Adrian Newey at Red Bull could foresee from the experience of recent years, but which Mercedes did not take into account. On the straights, the car hit the bottom of the tarmac and the riders clicked their teeth. “Luckily I don’t have a lot of fillings or they would fall out,” Lewis joked.

To reduce buildup, it was necessary to increase the suspension height, which greatly reduced aerodynamic efficiency, as most of the downforce in 2022 was generated by the bottom.

The car was lifted, the clamp was lost – all year the engineers worked to solve this problem, but they could not get rid of it completely. On rough roads, the W13 jumped, albeit to a lesser extent, until the end of the season.

Solving unexpected problems with the build required all the resources of the team, working on speed was simply out of the question. No, W13 wasn’t slow at all, but it proved extremely difficult to make it work effectively. For W13, every weekend turned out to be rainy, “lottery” – the team didn’t know what to expect from the car and what results to expect. Luck – no luck. And the rivals meanwhile increased the lead.

Lewis Hamilton sacrificed the first half of the season testing the most extreme set-ups with the engineers over the weekend in the hope that one of them would work and give the team an idea of ​​how to proceed. But nothing worked. No matter how hard Lewis and the engineers tried, the car lurched and failed to provide the necessary stability – every circle, every corner turned out to be new, preventing attacks.

Team rookie George Russell was given time to settle in. He did not work with experimental settings, he immediately demonstrated his speed, he was not inferior to Lewis and sometimes even surpassed him, but, of course, he expected much more from the move to Mercedes – winning races and fighting for the title.

Victory came later – in Sao Paulo, George brought Mercedes the only winning cup of the season and finished the season in fourth place, achieving the best result in his career.

For Hamilton, second place remained the best result – Lewis reached the podium nine times but was unable to win, interrupting the run that had continued since the start of his Formula One career, when he won at least one race every year. It is clear that his goals for the season were much higher than sixth in the individual standings, but he did his best to help the team out of the crisis. “Lewis is an integral part of the team and the team is an integral part of Lewis,” said Toto Wolff at the time.

You have to give credit to Mercedes. After the team fell behind on a record winning streak, after the departure of overbought Red Bull employees, lost the advantage in the power plant and made a systematic mistake in the development of a new generation car, the team did not give up and didn’t lose it, keep working hard and fighting until the last lap in every grand prix.

All the problems with the car are unlikely to be resolved in 2023, and the rivals will not stand still, and in the fight against the leaders, the lost year will be lost for two. There are no guarantees in Formula 1, and if Mercedes gets a chance in the battle against Ferrari, given the personnel and organizational changes at the Scuderia, it will be very difficult to overtake the winning Red Bull car that was previously gaining speed. has won the following major regulatory changes. If at all possible.

Toto Wolff, team boss: “We think we have largely solved the wobble problem, although it was not possible to solve it completely on the 2022 machine. But we believe that next year will be a little easier for us. We’re partially changing the architecture and layout of the machine, and this should allow us to move in the right direction.

But with this new technical arrangement sometimes it turns out that you reveal a problem and then it turns out that someone else is hiding behind it, so we have to keep working humbly and not be deceived that we will immediately start winning races and will once again claim victory in the claim championship.

I am an absolute believer that in order to succeed you must make mistakes and survive failures. There is no team in the world in any sport that would win all the championships it has competed in.

Studying is not easy, because talking about problems is one thing, but the real test of the team is when the difficulties are repeated every weekend. Looking back, I admit I pushed too hard on some points, but this allowed me to draw certain conclusions.