Guesswork, worry lines and a healthy dose of optimism: After Mercedes only presented itself as the third force after Ferrari and Red Bull at the Formula 1 season opener in Bahrain, the processing of the Silver Arrows is in full swing. Chief engineer James Allison names the problems and is confident that his team will soon get to grips with them.
Mercedes’ problems in the first race of the 2022 Formula 1 season were obvious. The W13 is simply too slow. The competition has advantages both on the straights and in the tight corners. In order to cover up their own shortcomings, the team in Bahrain made a serious compromise.
In the debrief, Chief Engineer James Allison explained on that Mercedes Youtube Channelwhy the silver ones lacked speed on the first race weekend.
“Most of it was due to the size of our rear wing. […] You could see that we drove the biggest rear wing of all the teams. And rear wings are a big factor in how much drag the car has. And drag is a big factor in straight line speed,” Allison explained.
The “million-dollar question,” the engineer admitted, is why Mercedes made this adjustment but still didn’t get the performance they were hoping for.
That’s why Mercedes drives the largest grand piano
“We’ve invested a lot of time to make the car as fast as possible. But we haven’t delivered anything competitive yet. At the moment we have to run the biggest rear wing so we have enough downforce to set the fastest time with our car drive.” However, Allison admitted that time was not enough.
For the near future, the 54-year-old promised a step in the right direction: “In the next races we will improve our car quickly. That will then allow us to drive with a little less wings and to be faster on the straights.”
Porposing caught Mercedes “pretty badly”.
Another problem that all teams, but especially Mercedes, have to contend with is “porposing”, the uncontrolled bouncing of the W13 at high speeds. “Porposing surprised all the teams but really pissed us off,” Allison said.
In the meantime, the team is already in the process of getting the problem under control: “But at the moment we only have it under control because we are giving up part of the car’s performance in return.” In the coming weeks, however, the team will find a solution to get the bouncing under control without affecting general performance at the same time.
“Did I feel even worse after the winter tests”
Mercedes is currently around 0.6 seconds behind Ferrari and Red Bull on average, Allison calculated. “But we also have many problems. Problems for which there are solutions,” said the engineer confidently.
“To be honest, I felt even worse after the winter testing. The improvements we made from testing to the first race might not have been visible and reassuring to the fans, but they reassured us. And like us Tackling problems and finding solutions makes me confident that we will quickly catch up with the teams in front of us,” Allison gave the Mercedes fans hope.