The ‘trap’ Mercedes fell into with F1's new regulations

The ‘trap’ Mercedes fell into with F1's new regulations

 

 

 

Following years of sustained dominance amid an unprecedented winning run of eight consecutive constructors’ world championships, Mercedes endured a torrid campaign when radical new ground-effect design regulations were introduced in 2022. Mercedes’ competitive struggles have continued into 2023, leading to a mid-season revamp of the W14 after finally abandoning their unique ‘zeropod’ approach.Although Mercedes have made progress since switching philosophies, the Silver Arrows are continuing to play catch up to runaway F1 leaders Red Bull. “If you were to go back to the old regulations, you could put the car where you wanted to put it, you had big travel in the suspension which allowed you to shape the balance a but better through the corners,” Elliott explained. “You weren’t limited by stiffness, you could chase where the aerodynamic performance was in the regulations.”With these cars, aerodynamically, they want to run close to the ground. If you run them close to the ground, you have got to run them stiff.”That is one of the traps we fell into last year if we are honest.“There is always going top be that balance you have on this set of regulations: you’ve got guys that want to run really close to the ground… how do you get that balance right?”Related De Vries follows Latifi’s example after F1 axe with surprise move Ferrari should be ‘protagonists, not extras’, says disappointed ex-chairman

Elliott said the enforcement of the F1 cost cap, combined with aerodynamic testing restrictions, have made Mercedes’ job of getting back to the front even harder. Mercedes now believe they are on the right path to eventually return to winning ways, with Lewis Hamilton claiming a pole position and three podiums since the Monaco upgrade was rolled out – underlining their gains. “If you look at the aero testing restrictions, you have got so limited number of runs that you’ve got to pick a direction and go for it,” Elliott said. “It’s really hard to… if you go down the route of saying ‘I want to develop a car for higher ride heights, one for low ride heights’ and I want to cover all my bases, suddenly you’d be doing three runs a week on each one and going nowhere.”So you have got to pick a direction and go in it and as you learn, you can tweak that direction and move it slightly.”I’d like to think we’ve sort of got ourselves into the right place.” 

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