Mercedes revealed the reason for their struggles with their preparation for the 2022 season, saying the winter break hasn’t been kind to them.
F1 will see new regulations implemented in 2022. This means every team will receive a clean slate. As a result, no team’s position on the grid for 2022 can be predicted before the season kicks off.
Mercedes were the most dominant team in the hybrid era. The German giants won eight out of eight Constructors’ Championships since 2014, standing head and shoulders above the rest of the F1 teams. They also won seven out of eight Drivers’ Championships.
However, Mercedes revealed the reasons for their struggles with their preparation for 2022, saying the new regulations have disturbed their usual routine.
As quoted by GP Fans, in a video titled ‘Road to 2022’, Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott said, “The big challenge over the winter has been the fact that we have less runs to use in the wind tunnel, so that has been challenging, trying to work out how much we should have spent on last year’s car versus how much we should have spent on this year’s car.
“Spending so much on last year’s car has made this year’s job complicated. This had knock-on consequences all the way through the factory.”
So much work, so little time
“In terms of design work, we start design work earlier on things like gearbox and chassis, particularly as the gearbox is fixed for a period of time, we have had to get that right,” he continued.
“Once we then begin to understand how the aerodynamics are going to look and how that is going to knock on to the rest of the car, we then get into sort of the detailed design work and that has been huge over the winter.
“So this sort of approach we take is the same we take every year. It is just more difficult because the rule changes are much more significant than we have seen in the past.”
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