Two podiums hit in five races, collected more for the reliability problems of the Red Bulls than for their own merits, and 62 points away from the top in the constructors’ standings. The 2022 of the Mercedes it got off to a very complicated start for the eight-time world constructors champion team, which looks set to lose the team title for the first time since F1 entered the hybrid era.
Yet, thanks to an era of unprecedented successes in the history of the sport, the silver arrows seem to be very scary to opponents even when they are in difficulty. It took a few flashes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell in free practice in Miami to make straighten the antennas a good part of the paddock.
The W13 is still a long way from Ferrari and Red Bull in terms of performance. However, the Florida weekend seems to have highlighted a strong point of the two Anglo-German cars: the slow curves. A ‘logical’ quality, thinking instead of all the enormous problems related to porpoising that Mercedes pays in the fast corners and above all in the straight. Obviously there is a circuit that more than all the others offers opportunities to those who have the ability to maximize performance in slow sections: Montecarlo. Already in recent days the former Swiss driver Marc Surer had indicated the team led by Toto Wolff as the possible favorite for the weekend in the Principality. Now a similar thought has been expressed, albeit in a less explicit way, also by Lando Norris, McLaren standard bearer and third last year in the race through the Monegasque streets.
“Surprised by the Mercedes improvements in Miami? I would not say – Norris commented to the site RacingNews365 – this track [Miami] it has a lot of slow speed corners and Mercedes has been one of the best cars on the low-speed grid since day one. I think this weekend they understood a little more and maximized the potential of their car, so I’m not surprised. It’s the same thing that has been happening in Formula 1 for years: some weekends your car adapts to one track and other times it adapts to another “. Statements that certainly increase the curiosity to see the two cars of Russell and Hamilton on the track in Monte Carlo.
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