Waiting to see first-hand in preseason and later in the first Grand Prix who has hit the nail on the head with the new regulations, the Mercedes technical department predicts really costly blunders at the start of the year.
Formula 1 says goodbye to a regulation that, despite having undergone various changes since it was established in 2017with the introduction of wider single-seaters, the fastest in the history of the premier class of motorsports, has remained practically unchanged since then.
The regulatory revolution that arrives in 2022 represents a paradigm shift in the ‘Great Circus’, a change of a caliber never seen to date, a plot twist so severe that it can leave whoever shows up in Bahrain in the lurch, but already in the winter preseason that will start in Barcelona, with a useless single-seater.
At least that is what the technical director of Mercedes predicts. “We will find out together at the beginning of the season, in the races that take place thereafter, how it all works out. I imagine, as the cars are so new and different, that one or two cars on the grid will have done really poorly, and will have a terribly painful year» argued James Allison.
stillborn
Although starting the season with a car superior to that of your rivals or at least with an idea that has only occurred to you, such as Mercedes’ own famous DAS in 2020, is usually an advantage, Allison confirms that this year it will be even more.
“Everyone on our team, as well as each other, will have done everything we can to try and find a design and an approach that suits the new regulation», he thought aloud.
«We will all have left things in the inkwell. We’ll look at the other cars and think… ‘oh, why don’t we think about that?’”
«I understand that all of us, to a certain extent, will have left things in the pipeline that we had not foreseen. We’ll look at the other cars and think… ‘oh, why don’t we think about that?’ Then we will go running to try to transfer that idea to our car as quickly as possible, so that we can recover from the position that we occupy in that first race forward, “he added.
The game of ‘cat and mouse’, therefore, will star in the start of the 2022 World Cup once everyone puts their designs into play. Or else, if we’re lucky enough to be up front, to keep the wolf attacks under control. It’s going to be quite a race, no doubt won’t let us sleep much throughout the season.”
motivational challenge
Despite having shouted from the rooftops that the change introduced in the regulations in 2021 had been devised by and to stop his relentless streak, with a triangular cutout on the edge of the floorin front of the front wheels, which more noticeably affected those single-seaters with a lower ratein Mercedes they face this new challenge with enthusiasm.
“When the rulebook changes as drastically as it does, we approach it with all the fun and relish that challenge deserves,” Allison confessed. “Our job is to investigate technical opportunities in the regulationsand then use our combined ingenuity and skills, all the effort we put in collectively, to try and come up with a set-up for the car that is better than everyone else’s.”
Finally, the successor of Paddy Lowe in charge of the technical section at Mercedes in 2017, who handed over his position to Mike Elliott last year to become part of the inner core of the German formation, revealed that they are confident they have done their job well.
“When everything is so new, everywhere you look in the ruleset, it’s twice as thick as the old one, there are opportunities. Of course, there are also risks. We try to make our way through that potential minefield and collect all those little treasures that are between those mines, to end up with a car that we hope will send us to the front of the grid, “he concluded.