One of the longest winning streaks in motorsport history is in danger. From 2014 to 2021, Mercedes has won the Formula 1 Constructors Championship for an unprecedented eight years in a row. After a slow start to 2022, however, Ferrari has pulled ahead in the title fight. Although it’s still early, Mercedes faces difficult circumstances as the defending champions are already trailing by a wide margin.
Mercedes regularly started the season as the favorite for the title and slipped down the rankings of the betting futures markets. In fact, Formula 1 betting fans who check the odds with their free bets for new customers will see that the German team is available at unusually high prices.
That extent of the problem
We are three races into the new season and Ferrari has already won two of the first three races. In Saudi Arabia, Red Bull also deserved a checkered flag, but Mercedes has yet to do so.
The German team is not far behind the leaders and a successful title defense is not impossible. They’ve achieved two podiums in those three races, but haven’t finished higher than third place yet. Lewis Hamilton was third in the opening weekend while teammate George Russell was third last time out in Australia. Mercedes is 39 points behind the lead. While there is still time for Mercedes to catch up, pre-season trends are worrying.
Accuse the rules, not the driver
It would be easy to point the finger at a new driver, but newcomer George Russell is doing just as well as seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton. Instead, the main culprit appears to be the rule changes enforced by Formula 1 this season, or more specifically, Mercedes’ relative failure to adapt to the rules compared to its rivals.
The so-called “porpoise” problem, which causes the car to bounce on its suspension at high speed, seems to have surprised Mercedes. This phenomenon has affected all teams to some extent and is largely due to the rule changes that apply to car floors.
While all teams have grappled with this to some degree at the start of the new year, Red Bull and to a lesser extent Ferrari have been most successful in gaining the upper hand while Mercedes struggled to resolve the issues. The result has been that they are often well behind their major competitors, in some cases by as much as two seconds behind them.
More speed less control
Resolving the issue at this point in the current season is incredibly challenging. As you increase speed to make the car more competitive by driving the car lower, the porpoise becomes more intense and control decreases significantly. Instead, Mercedes was forced to run the car higher, drastically reducing the problem but sacrificing seconds and points in the process.
To solve the problem
While Mercedes and drivers Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have made it clear in their message that the car needs more downforce and power, with the engines also being a minor concern, they have also been consistent in their forecast that there is plenty of room for potential corrections gives.
So far, the plan was for the team to introduce incremental upgrades in the early rounds of the tournament, which began at the Australian Grand Prix. However, the magnitude of the problem and the time it will take to resolve it should not be underestimated.
The bottom line here is that the car isn’t as good as the Ferrari or Red Bull cars. Mercedes is in an unfamiliar intermediate state for the time being. Their car is still faster than the rest of the field, but significantly slower than the two teams in front of them, which limits their points haul. The plan for the team is obvious, to try to maximize their points haul and hope for mistakes from Red Bull and Ferrari in the short term.
summary
Can you turn it around? With their combined expertise and arguably the greatest driver of all time in Formula 1 history on their team, the answer has to be yes. But the concern for Mercedes and its fans is how far along the competition will be by then. Last year they overtook Red Bull but this time they are chasing two rivals and their problems are much bigger. Everything indicates that this will be another exciting finish in the Constructors’ Championship.
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