2022 Mercedes-AMG | Petronas F1 Team

[AR3-GP]

Hamilton admitting that he is still sturggling with the car but George is able to drive it.

Errr..no that's not what he said. His quotes exactly:

“I’m still struggling with car. George looked great out there, but we’re trying different things, so I guess we’ll converge.”

So yeah. they are trying different setups and right now George has the better performing setup, but it visibly has more porpoising. They're still looking for a good compromise that both drivers can use. That's the way I read that.

Doesn't each driver have setup preferences?

[siskue2005]

Hamilton admitting that he is still sturggling with the car but George is able to drive it.

Errr..no that's not what he said. His quotes exactly:

“I’m still struggling with car. George looked great out there, but we’re trying different things, so I guess we’ll converge.”

So yeah. they are trying different setups and right now George has the better performing setup, but it visibly has more porpoising. They're still looking for a good compromise that both drivers can use. That's the way I read that.

Doesn't each driver have setup preferences?

Ofcourse everyone has their preference.

However from Shovlin's and drivers comments saying they both were running different solutions and thats the reason why Lewis s3 was 2 tenths faster than anyone (which has very long straights), whereas George was faster in s2 with twisty bits.
Hence lewis saying the ideal setup needs to converge, somewhere in between were they are faster everywhere

[wogx]

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff isn’t convinced that allowing an 11th team into Formula 1 would add sufficient value to the sport.

https://www.racefans.net/2022/05/07/wol ... formula-1/

[chrisc90]

More the better. Guess he's worried about being even further back on the grid.

After listening to the Andretti interview yesterday who said they have a engine manufacturer sorted....I think we can safely say it wont be a Merc PU in the back of it

[dialtone]

RUS FP2 v RUS FP3



I think they are sliding around, it's not about porpoising, they have difficulty in traction zones rather than acceleration, top speed or braking. Sliding a lot, especially out of T17.

[Shrieker]

I'm having a hard time believing they changed nothing or very little from yesterday, yet ended up so far adrift. And the bouncing in its ugly incarnation seems to be back out in full force.

Maybe they were experimenting to collect data ? Has anyone from the team said anything about it ?

[Dr. Acula]

I'm having a hard time believing they changed nothing or very little from yesterday, yet ended up so far adrift. And the bouncing in its ugly incarnation seems to be back out in full force.

Maybe they were experimenting to collect data ? Has anyone from the team said anything about it ?

I rather think Merc were the only ones who drove empty yesterday. The times from FP2 and Quali are similar. So they didn't got slower, just everybody else has goten faster.

[Hammerfist]

Very strange what happened to Merc. Lewis matched the ferraris on the first q2 runs and was head and shoulders above the midfield but the pace then disappeared after that and theyre pretty much back to where they were at the first race of the year. Russell basically lost his edge from fp3 on. The car is so inconsistent. They dont seem to be anywhere close to have a good grasp of it. And thats everyone; including drivers and engineers,

[Vaexa]

It feels like W13 just absolutely refuses to stay in any sort of windows. Russell I can notch up to Mercedes bungling their Q2 strat (as they do), but the car itself just swings so wildly in pace. Very strange.

[west52keep64]

I think the car concept is a write off. We are nearly 25% through the season and they don't seem to be making any progress. I think they'll need the rest of this season to figure out the correlation issues to ensure they stand a chance of coming up with a decent car for 2023.

Merc won't win a race this year, no chance.

[Swed3120]

I honestly think Mercedes have about as much idea of their car than any other midfield team , maybe a little less than McLaren and alpine , but if you look at the rest of the midfield , all of them are quite inconsistent and Mercedes (and it’s Fans) simply aren’t used to the pace-swings common in the midfield. See last years Ferrari ( 1&2 in practice at Hungary only to fall back significantly in qualifying)

Not that it necessarily relates to the car but I’m sure bottas is pretty happy with his career choice this weeekend

[erudite450]

The car was no where today, sliding all over the place just like in Jeddah. Terrible! The team clearly needs to do better. They have Hamilton, the greatest driver of his generation, and Russell who is right up there with Leclerc and Verstappen (in my opinion). The drivers need a better equipment.

Frankly, both drivers deserve a lot of credit. Even with the evident difficulties shown by the car, they still somehow always keep it on the track while a lot of drivers on the grid are binning it and incurring more spending on repairs and losing valuable track time. It's time for the car to start showing improvement.

[JordanMugen]

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff isn’t convinced that allowing an 11th team into Formula 1 would add sufficient value to the sport.

https://www.racefans.net/2022/05/07/wol ... formula-1/

Boo! It's like Mercedes don't even care if they don't have a junior team to place De Vries and Vandoorne in F1...

There should be the maximum permitted 13 teams and 26 cars on the grid. FOM should pay out to all 13 teams to avoid the prior situation of P11-13 in the WCC continuously going bankrupt.

Mercedes themselves are partly responsible for the meagre grid by not stepping in to buy Manor and make it a junior team. It's not like they don't have enough left over with the budget cap to run a 2nd team, so why not support their (albeit not so young) junior/reserve drivers and put them on the grid?!

[silver]

Very strange what happened to Merc. Lewis matched the ferraris on the first q2 runs and was head and shoulders above the midfield but the pace then disappeared after that and theyre pretty much back to where they were at the first race of the year. Russell basically lost his edge from fp3 on. The car is so inconsistent. They dont seem to be anywhere close to have a good grasp of it. And thats everyone; including drivers and engineers,

Other teams did the usual routine of turning up the pace step by step towards Q3. But for some reason Mercedes went for glory runs with free practice itself by turning all of their pace up, more so with Russell. So they stayed pretty much where they were in FP2.

[taperoo2k]

I honestly think Mercedes have about as much idea of their car than any other midfield team , maybe a little less than McLaren and alpine , but if you look at the rest of the midfield , all of them are quite inconsistent and Mercedes (and it’s Fans) simply aren’t used to the pace-swings common in the midfield. See last years Ferrari ( 1&2 in practice at Hungary only to fall back significantly in qualifying)

Not that it necessarily relates to the car but I’m sure bottas is pretty happy with his career choice this weeekend

2022 might well be one long test session for Mercedes, figuring out what went wrong and applying the lessons to the design of the 2023 car. If the budget cap wasn't in place, we probably would have seen Mercedes throwing everything and the kitchen sink at the problem in an attempt to fix the car. Maybe Mercedes need to admit to themselves they got the concept wrong for the new regulations and go from there. It's probably tempting to think if we solve X,Y and Z problems, we'll unlock the car's inherent speed. Which could happen, but it doesn't look likely at the moment.

I guess with newer F1 fans, they haven't experienced the cycle of top teams dominating for a while, before falling back for various reasons.