The 2022 it turned out to be a year on the verge of disastrous for the Mercedes, especially after eight years of total dominance among manufacturers. Without any victory and pole by Lewis Hamilton during the entire championship (which has never happened in the Englishman’s career), the Anglo-German team was able to rejoice in the success taken in extremis by George Russell in the penultimate round of the season in Brazil. a fact that did not however allow the Brackley manufacturer to reach at least 2nd place in the general standings.
Among performance problems and in some cases of reliability, to which have been added those related to porpoising, the W13 it looked the same throughout the world, save for some encouraging progress towards the end of the season. In reality, while maintaining the ‘zero sidepod’ philosophy, the Mercedes technicians have made important changes to the concept of the car for the current world championship, which seem non-existent from the outside.
Changes that have also been confirmed by the team principal Toto Wolff, as he himself admitted to the media at the end of the championship: “I go to the wind tunnel and say: ‘This looks exactly like this year’s car’ – he explained – but they tell me that underneath it is very different. These are airflow, weight distribution and aerodynamic map. Our car changed dramatically in the middle of the year: we changed the concept, but you couldn’t see anything on the bodywork. I think the narrow sidepod idea is something of a red herring. The last time I saw it in the wind tunnel it was full of surprises, but I’m told it’s not the same”. To demonstrate the interventions implemented by the technicians of Brackley, according to Wolff, there is the project of the future W14 who will face the 2023 World Championship, which will have a different DNA from that of the W13 to try to make up ground from Red Bull, with the aim of returning to the top of F1 after a 2022 to forget.
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