Last year when Red Bull and Ferrari were battling for the Formula One world title, Mercedes was struggling to be found. For the first time after 2013, the team faced the bouncing problem, which in terms is known as the porpoising issue. Instead of winning, team Mercedes spend the 2022 season learning through analysis. Even after several upgrades and evolution in the W13, the Silver Arrows could only achieve a solitary win. As claimed by the Mercedes principal, Toto Wolff, the main why Mercedes could not match the pace of Red Bull and Ferrari initially was the sudden change of technical regulations. Mercedes is indeed a master of the turbo hybrid era. But the ground effect floors are something they lack in experience.
Most of the 2022 F1 season went into fixing problems of the W13 for the eight-times constructor’s champion team. After the summer break, usually, every team starts to prepare for next year’s cars. But the Brackley based-team was still struggling to make their present car stable. Instead of developing, Mercedes were dealing with already existing problems.
Now that the most brutal career season is done and dusted, and another has arrived, Lewis Hamilton’s team wants to avoid repeating the same mistake. They have launched their 2023 championship-winning car. The W14 is, in fact, a black livery same as the W11, with which Hamilton won his seventh title. The car has been changed from Silver to black due to the overweight issue. Yet fans are happy to see their demand getting fulfilled.
Mercedes Unable To Find The Issues Of W14 With Just 3 Test Runs
To not repeat the same mistake again in 2023, Mercedes wants to learn about their new car even before the season begins. But here again, they are facing a little problem. This year FIA has allowed only three pre-season test runnings to the Formula One team. When Lewis Hamilton and George Russell geared down the W14 for the first time in Silverstone during the launch on February 15, they found some “niggles”. And the team is sure that with more test runs, they will find out some more issues in the car.
Mercedes can’t do anything until they are unaware of the unexpected issues coming from their 2023 F1 challenger. Showing concerns about the shortage of test running of f1 cars, Mercedes technical director Mike Elliott said, “Last year, we never really got on the top of the car.” The normal developments of the car were not done at the beginning of the 2022 season. This is because there were several problems that Mercedes was trying to rectify. However, this year they have got only three days of testing. And this, according to Mike Elliott, will create two major impacts on the team’s performance.
The first impact will come as the limited mileage in learning about the car. And another impact is based on the usage of time. Mike said, “The team won’t be able to measure the new car’s absolute reliability too much.” And for the second impact, he said, “Now we have got to our milted as efficiently as possible.” Bringing out the maximum capability of the car and the need to feed the next developments should be done during the pre-season tests only. With just three days scheduled for that, this will definitely affect Mercedes’s performance this year.
