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Mercedes believe they still have a chance at winning the world championship in 2022, after having one of the best weekends of the season in Barcelona.
The team’s technical director Mike Elliott says they wouldn’t be losing hope until it’s “mathematically over” and believes they still have “every chance” at winning the title. Speaking in a press conference during the 2022 F1 Spanish GP weekend, Elliot said:
“Of course, we wouldn’t be here otherwise, would we? I think that’s the nature of sport. I think that until it’s mathematically over, it’s not over. We’re not a huge distance behind and if we can get the car into a position where we’re competitive, and hopefully out in front, then there’s every chance.”
Mercedes had a poor start to the season this year after being caught out by a change in aero regulations. Their radical “no-pod” design initially failed to deliver the results that they had hoped for, leaving them trailing rivals Red Bull and Ferrari during the early races.
Coming to Barcelona, however, the Silver Arrows brought a major upgrade package aimed at solving some of their biggest issues, while also aiming for an improvement in lap times. The new parts seem to have worked as expected, fixing the W13’s porpoising issues, and bringing it closer to the RB18 and F1-75 in terms of pure performance.
This bodes well for the team heading into the rest of the season. Despite their early struggles, they have always believed in their design philosophy and seem to have finally managed to unlock the touted potential of the car.
Nevertheless, Mercedes are still realistic about their chances given the head start that their rivals have had. While they are hoping to claw back their deficit, Mike Elliot doesn’t expect it to be easy. He added, saying:
“We’ve got to have a level of humility. These guys to my right of [in the press conference] have made a really good start, Ferrari have made a really good start, and they’re not going to be easy to chase down.”
Mercedes 2022 car much more “settled” after Barcelona upgrades
Mercedes technical director Mike Elliot has revealed that the raft of new parts that the team brought to Barcelona has helped them fix — at least partially — one of their biggest gremlins this season: porpoising. Elliot says the W13 is much more settled now and working as they expect it to. He said:
“We made a good step forward. There is the normal development of the car that you would do anyway and then I think we’ve done quite a bit of work to try and understand the bouncing effects, to work out how we best mitigate those. The car seemed a lot more settled. It did what we were hoping it to do so.”
Almost every team across the grid has been caught off guard by porpoising this season. The issue, however, seemed to affect Mercedes the most. The violent bouncing was more prominent on the W13, especially under braking and initial turn-in, robbing driver confidence.
The team had earlier attributed most of their problems to the issue, claiming that solving it would help them unlock the car’s full potential.
