Mercedes Admit to Not Doing a “good enough job” Unlike Rivals

It’s been the most challenging of season’s for the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team, who have seen their eight-year reign of the World Constructors’ Championship come to a shocking end.

2022 has been the Germans most challenging season in the hybrid era, with the side having fallen down the pecking order after so many years of complete domination. Despite two much better results at the recent races in the United States and Mexico CIty, the damage in regard to the championship was done in the first-half of the year, as a result of the side’s porpoising issues.

Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have gotten the most out of the W13 this season, with the duo having achieved fifteen podiums between them in what has been a car well below the standards set by Oracle Red Bull Racing and Scuderia Ferrari.

Whilst it does appear that the Brackley-based team have moved ahead of Ferrari in terms of performance, they still sit forty points behind in the standings, a gap that looks too big to overcome with just two races remaining.

A win is the main thing, though, that continues to elude the Germans, with it looking set that the side won’t win a race this season for the first-time since 2012.

Mercedes’ Head of Trackside Engineering, Andrew Shovlin, is the first to admit that the team haven’t done a “good enough job” this year but that they are finally back amongst the “front pack”.

“We haven’t done a good job, because we went from a situation of winning consecutive championships, winning all the championships there have been in the hybrid era, to being a long way off the pace when we started the year,” Shovlin told Formula1.com.

“We’re honest with ourselves, we didn’t do anything like a good enough job, and Ferrari did a much better job, and Red Bull did a much better job. [But] where I think we have worked well is to understand what went wrong, to try and recover some of that ground.

“The position we were in maybe in the first third of the year, we were firmly in the mid-pack, we were being beaten by cars that six months ago we were lapping, [and we’ve progressed] to get to the point that we’re in today. We’re not the fastest car, we’re not where we need to be, but it does feel like we’re now in the race with the front pack.”

After arguably being in Russell’s shadow during the first-half of the year, Hamilton has by far been the better Mercedes driver in the second phase of the season. He’s managed to achieve a second-place finish at the last two races and has by far looked like the team’s best hope of victory. This change in performance comes after the seven-time World Champion was linked to a potential retirement, following Mercedes’ backwards step.

The complete opposite now looks set to happen, with Hamilton and Team Principal Toto Wolff having indicated that a new multi-year deal is in the pipeline for the thirty-seven year old.

Shovlin admitted that the team’s poor start to the year was a “bit of a shock” for the one-hundred three-time Grand Prix winner, but that he remains as “super motivated” as always to return to winning ways.

Credit: LAT Images

“Lewis is always working hard, super motivated and desperate to try to win,” Shovlin added.

“I think, going from the competitive position that we’ve had in the preceding years, to a really difficult car at the start of the year, was a bit of a shock for him.

“[It was] also a bit of an adjustment for us to get used to working… effectively racing in the mid-pack for a lot of the early part of the year, having to make a lot of compromises with the car to try to get the best out of it, and then learning at the same time.

“I think, the same as us as a team, Lewis can also see that we’re definitely going in the right direction. We can see a clear route to getting back to a point where we can challenge for pole positions and wins.

“You can see with Lewis’ commitment to the team, that’s increasing, the closer we get, and his commitment to putting in the work on his side to try and help us achieve those goals.”