Mercedes concede possibility W13 concept ‘simply doesn’t work’

Having won the constructors’ title last year, it’s a huge fall from grace for the team to be without a single Grand Prix in 2022

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Mercedes continued their Formula One struggles at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix over the weekend, leaving team boss Toto Wolff admitting there’s a possibility that the new car built for the 2022 season “simply doesn’t work”.

New regulations for this campaign saw each F1 team design and refine new vehicles, but while some - like Ferrari’s F1-75 - have enabled the team to take enormous leaps in competitiveness, Mercedes have fallen short.

Their W13 model has been beset by porpoising issues, even before reaching top speeds and on both straights and corners, with the unconventional ‘zero-pods’ design behind most of their troubles in the eyes of some experts. Those were prevalent again on Sunday, where Lewis Hamilton finished 13th and George Russell performed well to claim fourth.

Wolff, who labelled Sunday’s race at Imola a “low” point for the team, now acknowledges that the entire concept of the car may be the root cause of the terrible start to the season and hopes that further changes across the coming weeks might lead to an improvement.

“It is a valid point [that the design concept may be flawed]. All of the goodness and badness happens mainly on the floor and we have interesting ideas and concepts that we are exploring that have to find their way onto the car in the next few races,” he told BBC Sport.

“I wouldn’t say there is such thing as a concept being wrong. But is there a part of what we have done that simply doesn’t work with the regulations, and what is it?

“You don’t need to throw away the goodness, but if there are fundamental areas that don’t allow us to unlock the potential that we believe is in the car, then you need to cut your losses.”

However, that doesn’t mean Mercedes are ready to throw in the towel.

Wolff isn’t prepared to abandon the data collected, the line of belief in the engineering team and the prospect of unlocking those improvements within the W13, especially as they don’t yet have answers as to what Mercedes would do next in any case.

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“It would mean you say, ‘Where is the baseline now?’ Is there a new one we can start on where we believe we can unlock more potential?

“If we thought that, we would have done it five months ago. We believed this was the development line we needed to take. So it is quite a tricky exercise.

“You can only cut the losses into next year if you understand where we got it wrong, because at the moment we simply don’t. Not yet.”

Hamilton wrote off being involved in the title fight this year after his performance in Italy, while Wolff apologised to the seven-time champion for the state of the “undriveable” car.

Teammate Russell was praised for holding off Sebastian Vettel to secure fourth at Imola, with Wolff revealing that they had anticipated different weather.

“George really drove well considering the car he had underneath. He had a car that was setup for the wet, and not for dry and he handled it... a really really good drive.”