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“They may have a terribly painful year ahead”: Mercedes chief does not rule out the possibility of F1 teams messing up the 2022 car design

Somin Bhattacharjee
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Mercedes chief technical officer James Allison feels that some F1 teams are likely to get the 2022 car design completely wrong. 

The start of the 2022 F1 season is just over two months away. Ahead of the new campaign, teams and drivers are gearing up for major regulation changes that are expected to shake the field up.

F1 announced last year that the cars would go through significant aerodynamic changes, that will produce ‘lesser dirty air’. As a result, drivers would be able to follow the cars ahead of them more closely, providing them with more overtaking opportunities.

These changes mean that the car designs will be drastically different from their predecessors. With so little time left, teams are now in closing stages in terms of designing their cars. Drivers will first get a chance to test their cars out in next month’s pre-season testing session in Barcelona.

In a video released by Mercedes, their chief technical officer James Allison shared his thoughts on the new mechanical packages, teams are developing.

“Everyone in our team, and everyone in every other team, will have done our level best to try to find a design. An approach that will be a happy match to this new regulation set,” said Allison.

Also read: Watch: On this day Lewis Hamilton had his first day at Mercedes factory in 2013

A team that gets stuck with a poorly designed cars will suffer for a long time, says the Mercedes chief.

Teams will definitely need time to understand these regulation changes thoroughly. Allison feels that drivers and the staff would get a better grasp as the season progresses, by comparing their development to those of teams around them.

“We’ll all get to find out together at the start of this season. In the races that unfold from there, exactly how that shakes out,” he continued.

“I would imagine, given that the cars are so new and so different, that one or two cars on the grid will have got it really badly wrong. And they will have a terribly painful year.”

“I would imagine that all of us to some degree will have will have left things on the table. That we just didn’t anticipate. And we will look at other cars and think ‘oh, why didn’t we think of that?’”

“Then we’ll be scrambling around to try to get that idea onto our car as fast as possible. So that we can claw our way, from whatever position we land in that first race, forwards. Or, if we’re lucky enough to be in front, to keep the attacking wolves behind us.”

“It’s going to be quite a rush. Definitely something that’s going to keep us all from having too much sleep. For the whole of the season,” the 53-year old concluded.

Also read: French Tennis star Gael Monfils names Mercedes superstar among the people he looks up to

About the author

Somin Bhattacharjee

Somin Bhattacharjee

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Somin Bhattacharjee is an F1 editor at The SportsRush and has written more than 2000 articles. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and considers sports to be a part of his life. Somin has been a fan of Scuderia Ferrari since 2010 and his favorite driver is none another than the legendary Fernando Alonso. Other than longing for a Ferrari Championship win once again, Somin spends his free time playing football and basketball.

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