Mercedes in 2022: Back on terra firma

The transition to the new regulations has been painful for Mercedes. The German team has fallen in the rankings, far behind Red Bull and also surpassed by Ferrari, while George Russell has outperformed his teammate in his first season as a regular member of Toto Wolff’s team.

Car performance

It would be almost an understatement to say that the W13 has been a big disappointment this season. After eight years at the top of the F1 hierarchy, Mercedes has plummeted in 2022 due to the new regulations. This was evident right from the start, during the first Grand Prix in Bahrain, with serious aerodynamic issues…forcing them to raise the car’s height and impacting performance compared to their rivals, Red Bull and Ferrari. The design of the W13 had caused quite a stir, with its extreme minimalism in terms of sidepods, almost non-existent. But the start of the season proved the German strategy wrong. While Mercedes was able to benefit from a double retirement from Red Bull in Bahrain, finishing 3rd and 4th, the W13 did not live up to expectations, struggling to reach the podium and only securing one victory. These performance issues and, above all, top speed problems will push Mercedes back to third place in the constructors’ championship, 39 points behind Ferrari.

On the positive side, it should be noted that the car, which Hamilton no longer wants anything to do with, generated a good amount of downforce in high-speed corners, making it competitive with Ferrari in this area. And despite its aerodynamic problems, it was still fully capable of overtaking the best cars in the midfield without much effort.

Reliability

If the performance of the W13 may have been disappointing, it nevertheless demonstrated an unwavering reliability, with only three retirements out of the 22 races of the season. Furthermore, the first two retirements were due to race collisions (Hamilton-Alonso at Spa and Russell-Zhou at Silverstone, resulting in an impressive crash for the Chinese driver). The last retirement was indeed caused by a technical issue, as Lewis Hamilton’s car suffered from a hydraulic problem in Abu Dhabi. Thanks to this exceptional reliability, Mercedes was able to secure valuable points, while Red Bull and Ferrari faced multiple setbacks throughout the season.

Optimization of the strategy.

Despite these performance issues, Mercedes has somewhat rectified the situation throughout the races, particularly addressing their concern with porpoising around mid-season. The team even discovered the root of the problem with the car… which was found to be in its floor. Thanks to these adjustments, Mercedes was able to achieve the long-awaited double victory in the penultimate race of the season, at the Brazilian Grand Prix. Hamilton secured three consecutive second-place finishes, while Russell achieved the ultimate by winning the Sprint, the Sunday race, and even claiming the fastest lap. It was a (small) redemption after a season that still needs to be forgotten, marked here and there by errors in tire strategy – notably at the Mexican Grand Prix, where Toto Wolff himself admitted that Mercedes got it wrong when the team initially bet on a victory for Lewis Hamilton.

Teammate showdown

Qualifications: Russell 10 – 12 Hamilton

Courses: Russell 12 – 10 Hamilton

We cannot deny that George Russell made a strong impression in his first year as a regular driver at Mercedes. The British driver has generally outperformed his teammate, a Formula 1 veteran who has been with the German team for 10 (!) seasons. Aside from the first race of the season in Bahrain, George Russell has consistently been ahead of Lewis Hamilton in terms of points, gaining the advantage in 12 races compared to 10 for his compatriot. He will have accumulated a total of 275 points at the end of the season, compared to 240 for his older teammate.

Russell even secured a pole position and a victory, whereas Hamilton’s record remained empty. However, Hamilton surpassed him in terms of qualifying sessions, having taken the advantage in 12 of them, compared to 10 for the young driver. He also recorded one more podium (nine).