It soon became clear that after the problems in the test drives and also in the first races of the season, Mercedes would not be fighting for the championship with the “porpoising”. Nevertheless, some would have expected that the team would find it easier to hunt for their first win of the season.
The “porpoising” could be solved with an update in the first third of the season in Barcelona, while the first pole position of the year followed in Hungary shortly before the summer break. But it was only in the penultimate race of the 2022 season in Brazil that redemption came when George Russell and Lewis Hamilton clinched a one-two for the Silver Arrows.
In retrospect, Mercedes admits that they probably only had a competitive car for the W13 with the final update in Austin. “In Austin we had a car with which we couldn’t beat Red Bull, but which at least put us in a reasonable position,” says technical chief Mike Elliott in a Mercedes video.
“Only then could we say that our development was going in the right direction and gave us some confidence for the future,” adds Elliott, who also explains why Mercedes didn’t make the final breakthrough after the Barcelona update.
New problems after ‘Barcelona exhilaration’
“We had the exhilaration from Barcelona that we did a good job and then in the next couple of races we saw other problems coming up in the car, problems with the way we were trying to keep the car close to the ground.”
“And it took a while before we got that under control,” explains the Mercedes technical director. “It wasn’t because we didn’t understand it, but it takes quite a long time to change these cars so that we understand it and perform.”
“Each of the packages we brought took us a small step in the right direction and then a small step in the right direction again.”
Toto Wolff: Had to try a lot after Barcelona
Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff adds that after “a solid weekend” Barcelona had to do a lot of testing with the W13 before being able to claim pole position with George Russell on their own in Hungary.
“I think we’re in the race [in Spanien] had pretty good pace. The rest of the races up to Budapest was more of a trial and error,” said Wolff. “We tried to reconcile what we didn’t see in the data with what was happening on the track.”
“We ended the first part of the season before the summer break really strong with pole position for George and, if I remember correctly, a good race too.”