This weekend at the Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, the Mercedes team hopes to correlate all the data it has on its W13, on a track well known to the teams on the grid, as Barcelona is where the first F1 winter tests of the year are held.
In the final round of the season in Miami, the Mercedes team managed to finish in the points with both cars (P5 for Russell and P6 for Hamilton) after introducing some improvements to the W13. Throughout the weekend in Miami, Mercedes took advantage of the test sessions to try and understand their F1 car a little better and, according to Toto Wolff, the car showed encouraging signs of its true potential, especially in free practice on Friday with a best time set by George Russell in Practice 2.
So after Miami, the German manufacturer’s team has some clear indications of where to go in terms of development and the Brackley engineers have not been idle as improvements are planned for this weekend’s Spanish Grand Prix in Barcelona.
“In Friday’s test [in Miami] the car showed signs of its true potential. We have continued to experiment with the set-up, we have installed new components, and this has given us some answers and indications of where we need to go,” said Toto Wolff ahead of the sixth round of the 2022 season.
“A huge amount of hard work has been done in the factories to extract the data from Miami and turn it into improvements for Barcelona. Having run there in winter testing, but with a car that has evolved a lot since then, it will be a good place to correlate the information we have on the current car and hopefully we will take another step forward.”
“Just like in basketball, we are heading to Barcelona at the end of the first quarter of the game. We know that once we translate the learning we’ve done into on-track performance, there’s still a lot of game left to play.”
Ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix, the Mercedes team sits third in the constructors’ world championship, 62 points behind current championship leaders Scuderia Ferrari.
The Judge, a nom de plume of an experienced F1 journalist and site founder with long-standing sources across the paddock. With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
Let’s hope it fails. I’ve seen to many MB successes the last ten years. Time for a fresh wind.