Mercedes pinpoint W13 early warning signs

Ewan Gale
Thursday 8 December 2022 17:15

Mercedes trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin has conceded the shortcomings of the W13 were apparent before the season had started.

The Silver Arrows collected only one victory across the 22-race campaign after being faced with a plethora of issues in the early stages of the season.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were forced to fight at the head of the midfield with McLaren, Alpine, Haas and Alfa Romeo as porpoising and poor drag efficiency held Mercedes' first car of F1's new regulatory era back.

But despite the developmental cycle being held back by an estimated eight to ten-month period, as suggested by team-principal Toto Wolff, Russell was able to secure a victory at the penultimate round of the championship in Brazil.

Asked how early the team was given warning signs of struggles, Shovlin explained: "The signs were there from the early running, even on the filming day we did at Silverstone, it was fairly obvious that you get this mechanism in the cars.

"We then went for three days in Barcelona and the car was not that competitive but we were expecting a big update that we were going to bring to Bahrain, and that was the point we realised we had a serious issue.

"At the Bahrain test, we put the update kit on and it simply didn't make the car go quicker.

"Now, it has been an interesting year from there on but there has been a lot of work to do to try and get on top of those problems."