Mercedes bosses in conclave: 'The engine freeze made it interesting'

Mercedes F1 did not get off to a fast start in 2022, but the engine was reliable. Despite an engine development freeze, Mercedes had to somehow ensure the W13 became competitive in 2022 and that was where the challenge lay, according to Toto Wolff, Mike Elliott and Hywel Thomas.

Mercedes had taken a wrong turn with its chassis development under Elliott's leadership. All year, Mercedes lagged behind and it remained one of those teams that suffered a lot from porpoising. On the engine side, there were other challenges. From the start of the 2022 season, an engine freeze would apply until 2025, meaning that no hardware modifications could be made from then on. Changes were also made to regulations around fuel consumption.

Mercedes overcame challenge of season

It provided Thomas with a major project to make the engine as strong as possible for the next three years. That engine was indeed strong, but not necessarily very fast. In a video from Mercedes Thomas says: "When we went to the track, there was some disappointment and we also saw things we could definitely repaire, but we knew we couldn't do that in the hardware. In fact, that has been our way of developing the car for the last years."

So the challenge was big, but Mercedes still managed to increase the engine's power without touching the hardware. Thomas: "How were we supposed to handle that? That became the challenge of the season; we were looking for a way to improve the engine while the hardware was frozen." Mercedes found out how strong the link was between the engine and the chassis in the 2022 cars: "You can't develop those two aspects separately anymore. You have to align the power unit even more beautifully with the chassis now."