The Mercedes F1 team had a tough outing in the practice session in the Hungaroring yesterday. Lewis Hamilton could not set a lap time owing to harsh weather conditions. Following the same, the team was also stuck in the midfield in successive sessions. This season has been a roller coaster ride for the Silver Arrows team so far. After their Monaco upgrades, things seem to have turned out, only to get worse later.
Recently, the team’s trackside director Andrew Shovlin admitted that Mercedes have failed to interpret the 2022 regulations accurately. The 2022 F1 season saw a significant overhaul, arguably the biggest this sport has seen in decades. The new-generation cars are fundamentally different from their predecessors. Back in the day, FIA introduced these changes to achieve a fair and more competitive F1 grid.
As a critical difference, modern car designs have simplified top-body aerodynamics and a more neutral front wing. This was implemented to tackle the dirty air and enable close racing. Soon after the new regulations were put in place, Red Bull undeniably to be the fastest of the lot. As we have seen in the past in F1 through and through, the team that interprets the newer regulations earns their domination on the grid. This is much like the Mercedes’ story during the turbo-hybrid era.
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Since the two seasons, Red Bull and Max Verstappen have been dominating the scene. The rest of the grid is taking turns to finish second, as it seems. This primarily implies that the Milton Keynes-based team has had the upper hand in deducing the 2022 regulations. However, this has not been the case for their 2021 rival Mercedes. In a recent interview reported by Crash, Merc director Andrew Shovlin talked about the same.
“With the old regulations, which we had a good grasp on, you didn’t need to consider the car in the same dynamic sense. The flow structures under our car, under every car, are more complicated now and they are more transient. What Lewis was referring to was really the fact that we and other teams would have had to develop their tools to cope with this new set of aero regulations,” said Shovlin.
“We’re getting to a stage where the correlation is good and we can start to see the effect of changes, but we’re not at the position we were with the regulations in 2020, 2021,” added the Briton.
As of now, the Brackley-based team stands second in the constructors ranking. Now, Lewis Hamilton is set to take the wheel of his W-14 for the very important qualifying session here in Hungaroring. The Briton will look to make a turnaround here to give the team a much-needed positive boost.
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