CTO Mercedes: 'This is one of the traps we fell into'

Red Bull Racing 's dominance has hit every other team. Mercedes in particular, which previously had the fastest car for eight years, is now finding that it is hugely lacking. Mike Elliot, Mercedes' chief technical officer, tells PlanetF1 what went wrong when the new regulations went into effect.

With eight constructors' titles and seven drivers' titles between 2014 and 2021, it is fair to say that Mercedes was the dominant team during that period. Lewis Hamilton won six of those seven world titles, and the other went to Nico Rosberg. In 2017 and 2018, Sebastian Vettel still competed for the championship, only he could not keep it up until the end.

Mistakes Mercedes on entering F1 regulations 2022

Times have changed, and Mercedes is no longer the fastest. Elliot does know why it is that Mercedes started the new regulations with such a deficit: "I think if you were to go back to the old regulations, you could put the car where you wanted to put it. You had big travel in the suspension, which allows you to shake the balance a bit better through the corners, you weren’t limited by stiffness, you could sort of chase where the aerodynamic performance is in the regulations."

"For these cars, aerodynamically they want to run close to the ground. And so, if you run them close to ground, you have to run them stiff – and that’s one of the traps we fell into last year, if we’re honest. So I think there’s always going to be that balance you have on this set of regulations. When you’ve got cars that want to run really close to the ground, how do you get that balance right?" the Mercedes CTO explained.