“It’s very difficult to answer that question”– Mercedes doesn’t know how fast they can be in 2022

Tanish Chachra | 08/04/2022
"It’s very difficult to answer that question"– Mercedes doesn't know how fast they can be in 2022

Mercedes are clueless about the pace potential of their car in 2022 even if they manage to solve their porpoising issue which has halted them.

Nobody right before the first Grand Prix would have thought that Mercedes would be struggling like this. Lewis Hamilton clocking out in Q1 was something far from imaginable.

Yet, in 2022, both things happened. The Brackley-based team is currently unable to challenge for the win, as their problem with porpoising is yet to be solved.

Though, Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin claims that even his team manages to solve the excessive bouncing. They have no idea where their pace will stand.

“That is probably priority number one because that’s ultimately preventing us from running the car where we’d like to run it for optimum performance,” Shovlin told Motorsport.com.

“What we don’t know is, if we could just magically make that issue vanish, where would we actually be in terms of car pace: is the car fast enough or not? And it’s very difficult to answer that question.”

Mercedes working to pull itself out

Currently, Mercedes is diagnosing the overall issue. The W13 is very slow due to porpoising when it comes to the straight-line speed. Thus it is easy for Red Bull and Ferrari to easily overtake them. Shovlin says that it is vital for Mercedes to come out of that problem.

“We’re well aware that there are other teams that have got on top of this problem faster than we have, that’s not the standard we normally work to.,” said Shovlin.

“Every bit of effort at the factory is going into getting on top of this, making sure we don’t neglect normal car development. But there’s a lot of work trying to pull us out of this situation at the moment.”

Mercedes in Melbourne wouldn’t be having any significant upgrades. They were expected to have lower downforce rear wings, but a last-minute update suggests that they won’t be doing it.

Also read: George Russell expects a similar struggle for Mercedes at the Australian GP

Post Edited By: Tanish Chachra
Mercedes

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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