For Mercedes, the 2022 season is undoubtedly a failure. Although so far, the team's two drivers, Russell (7 times) and Hamilton (6 times), have stood on the podium for a total of 13 times, but have not won the championship yet. For ordinary teams, this result is already very good, but in front of Mercedes, which has won the team championship for 8 consecutive times, this answer is definitely unqualified. In fact, with the first and second bringing back to Red Bull in the Japanese Grand Prix, the gap between Mercedes-Benz and the top team has reached 232 points. Due to the next four races, a team can only get 191 points at most. Mercedes-Benz's 9 consecutive championships may completely return to zero, and a miracle will never happen.
At the Japanese Grand Prix two weeks ago, Hamilton tried his best but failed to surpass Okang, and finally lagged behind Okang and crossed the finish line by 0.641 seconds. This scene caused many old car fans to curse. The W13 is so bad! Hamilton himself also complained about the car in an interview after the race: "I'm not frustrated. I did my best and was glad we got at least some points. We were too slow in the straight line, I was as close to Okon as possible, but once I drove out of the corner, he could immediately get a distance."
It is obvious that the W13, which was born under the major changes in the rules, was not successful. Although it had also brightened the audience's eyes on several tracks, the overall performance can only be said to be very bad. After all, Mei Ben suffered a loss of youth and had never experienced the last ground effect period (1977-1982). Although there are no engineers who have experienced that period in the R&D team of Ferrari , there is more or less a reference for relevant information. Red Bull's chief engineer Newe may be the only engineer in the entire paddock who has been exposed to ground effects before. He once designed a super sports car that uses ground effects for Aston Martin. In contrast, Mercedes-Benz is the only one in the universe group who designed the new racing from a piece of white paper.
Apart from the ground effect, Mercedes-Benz failed to bet on the side box design. As the only zero-side box racing car in the paddock, the W13 was striking when it first debuted. However, after the winter test, W13's severe dolphin jumping and poor lap speed made the audience worry about the performance of Mercedes-Benz in the 2022 season. However, many people still thought that TOTO was deliberately hiding something, but they didn't expect...
Where did the zero side box fail? The key issue is still: downward pressure on the car body. In the canteen of Bingge after the Japanese Grand Prix, Bingge introduced in detail the downforce data of the 2022 F1 racing season: at a speed of 250 kilometers per hour, the current downforce of F1 racing is between 10,000 n/15,000 n/a, that is, 1,000 kg-1,500 kg. 50% of this comes from the nose and tail wings, and the rest comes from the body and ground effects. The zero-side box design of Mercedes-Benz has caused the downforce generated by the W13 body to be too small, so Mercedes-Benz had to gain weight on the W13, which is what TOTO once said in an interview: "Our car needs to tow an extra weight of more than 10 kilograms." The conservative design of downforce ultimately makes the W13 a plain curve and vulnerable straight paths.
Recently, Mercedes revealed a little bit about their progress in racing development in 2023. According to technical director Mike Elliott, Mercedes now has some understanding of their performance fluctuations in the 2022 season and "what they need to do" in 2023.
When asked about the latest developments in Mercedes in 2023 and how much performance they need to recover relative to their competitors, Elliott said: "Obviously, we've started the development of next year's racing well. I think it's quite difficult to try to predict what kind of lap time you need to find. There are some races this year that we're already very close to the speed of the head racing car. In fact, our race performance is pretty good in many races."
The performance swing between the 2022 Singapore Grand Prix (Merce Benz is relatively competitive) and the 2022 Japan Grand Prix is an obvious example of what Elliott emphasized: "What we've been trying to understand is to understand this, and I think we do understand this now - we know what we need to correct. How much performance do you need to find? I obviously won't give you a number because that would leak a lot, but I think it's within the reach of what we can do. "So, Elliott is still very optimistic. He said that although Mercedes-Benz is currently behind Red Bull and Ferrari, if the entire team is "difficult" enough from now until the 2023 race, this gap can be completely compensated.
Hamilton will be 38 years old next year. C Ronaldo , which is only one month younger than him, has seen a visible decline in his condition this year. How long will it take for the old man to win the 8th WDC? You know, even if Mercedes-Benz builds a car with the strength to compete for the championship next year, Hamilton There is also a young man who is eyeing WDC by his side. Russell's performance this year has proved that he is fully capable of doing better than Hamilton. What's more, when you are improving, Red Bull and Ferrari will not stagnate, and the competition next year will surely be particularly fierce.
When Ronaldo fell out of the top ten of the Golden Ball Awards, , when James missed the playoffs after 17 years, when Hamilton may miss the championship for the first time in his career, the change of times has arrived unknowingly.
